


River Of Horrors - SCHLATTBUR [ MCYT MINI STORY ]

by xYouly



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Schlattbur - Fandom, mcyt
Genre: M/M, jschlatt x wilbur, mcyt - Freeform, river of horrors, schlattbur - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27505000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xYouly/pseuds/xYouly
Summary: A group of 6 boys — Wilbur, Schlatt, Tommy, Ty, Technoblade and Connor — all work together in a small detective agency, venturing out and exploring to debunk and uncover hidden myths and legends. (They call themselves the "MCIA" - "Myths and Cases Investigation Agency").One day, after Schlatt manages to find the River of Horrors — which was a legend they were trying to uncover for awhile — he calls Wilbur immediately to meet him.Meanwhile on the other boys end, they discover a plague roaming the world. And after the group pieces together all their discoveries and plans, they soon come to realise that the world may very well be in more danger than they think.
Relationships: Schlattbur
Comments: 21
Kudos: 98





	1. PT1 - CRAZY

**Author's Note:**

> This story is focused mainly in Wilbur Soot's perspective, and will include shipping (wilbur soot x Jschlatt). There will be light NSFW, potential gore, mystery, thriller/suspense, and romance. 
> 
> This is a short story - I've planned for it to have about 4 parts! I also have this story up on a collab wattpad account (@/Schlattbur).  
> I hope you enjoy this story :)
> 
> EDIT: yeah I take that back this story is going to have. a lot more than 4 parts xd

**RIVER OF HORRORS  
** **PART 1**

**───── ❝ CRAZY ❞ ─────  
**

****

Crazy is an understatement.

His state of mind has lost itself far beyond the reaching point of losing sanity itself - no, he's already lost it. He's lost it a long, long time ago. He's completely out of his mind.

The way his slender, icy fingers would coil firmly around their neck, digging his nails deep inside their flesh to keep them from escaping from his grasp; the way his deep, menacing voice would hiss in their ears, his words laced in pure, fanatical venom as he spits.  
The way he'd latch onto them, sending the face of the mallet in his hands pound down onto their feet; hearing the way their toes cracked and turned turquoise was music to his ears.

But it wasn't the way he'd claw at the victim he had in his hold, or the way he talked, or the way he had hammered them was what made him truly insane. What _really_ made him look insane was his eyes.

_It was his eyes._

His chafed, glazed-over eyes screamed with nothing but sheer, raw insanity; a wild craving for blood - human blood, flickering behind his maniacal and crazed ember eyes, darting back and forth in search for something to cease his hunger.

They called him Genocide Schlatt. Why, you may ask?

Because he devours human beings - hammering their feet until their legs go numb and their nerves stop functioning, no longer able to even stand, before he latches himself onto his victim and tears their throat out with no remorse.

That's why they call him Genocide Schlatt.

Schlatt's murders of his victims have gone on for months now. The man's cunning - _too_ cunning. He's been able to get away with every murder without getting caught. Though for the past few weeks, the police have been catching onto his acts. Which is why he had limited himself from devouring from two people a day to only two per week.  
However, being the unhinged and unstable cannibal he is, his starving hunger inevitably caught up to him, and his thirst for human blood grew stronger.

And now, in the dead of night of the deep, dark forest, there he is, pinning down his newly found victim, sealing his ending fate with a dreadful demise. His victim is a relatively young blonde boy; tall of height but young of face - perhaps 16 would be an accurate guess.

 _"Let go of me!"_ he shrieks.

His victims screams pierce through the air, but are cut off shortly as Schlatt chokes him by the neck.

 _"You don't know when to shut up, don't you stupid little boy?"_ he seethes at him, grinning as blood from biting down onto his own tongue too hard to keep himself from eating him dribbles down his mouth.

"I'm not a stupid little boy," the boy yells back, his voice strained from trying to escape the man's hold. "It's _Tommy! Tommyinnit! Now let me go you monster!"_

"Do I look like I _care?"_

"Well you should!"

_Tsk. The fucking boy just doesn't stop talking. Egotistical son of a bitch he is._

Tightening his grip around his neck, he silences the boy who claims himself to be 'Tommy', ignoring the spluttering, choked coughs that escape from his strained throat. With his other free hand, he picks up the mallet beside him, raising it in the air as he readies his-

"Let him go. _Or else."_

Schlatt jerks around, and there emerging from behind a set of bushes is a tall man. He's wearing a white suit and tie, covered over with a beige-brown coat, a brown deerstalker cap - like the ones detectives wear - and black boots. Over his shoulder is a slung backpack, underneath his coat is a belt with a series of magnifying glasses attached to it.

There's no doubt about it. It's him - one of the best aspiring detectives in town.  
Detective Wilbur Soot.

Detective Soot is a british man who had been born in England, and had always had a passion for investigating.  
Soot had always been a perceptive man, ever since he was a kid. After solving a number of crimes with his father, who is now a retired detective, Wilbur ended up getting a job as a Detective.

Little had anyone known that Soot had been working on the case of the teenager-devouring cannibal on his own will - working completely for himself, he's managed to piece together a lot of clues.  
He had deduced the killer's patterns and eating-schedules, and after months of research, he's finally succeeded in finding the man, who is now standing right before him with his own victim in hand.

Unable to believe his _own_ eyes, the detective takes another step closer to see the murderer.

It's a man - presumably in his 20s, just like him - hunched down over an ash-blonde haired boy. As the killer turns around to return the gaze, he's able to immediately notice the thin streams of blood running down his mouth. Wilbur winces at the sight, but stands his ground nonetheless.

"Let him go?" the man queries; a bitter venom laced between his words as he spits tauntingly. "Or else _what?"_

Detective Soot lowers his hand, digging through his coat; fingers latching onto the weapon tucked in his leather holster, he pulls out a pistol - which has been hidden underneath his coat. He aims the weapon at the man, all the while as he asserts.

"Or else I'll blow your brains out," he snaps, cocking the pistol as he aims it at the man's face. "You won't be getting away with your heinous actions this time, _Genocide Schlatt."_

He falls silent at this, biting his lip as he thinks. The boy in his grasp holds his breath in terror, frozen in fear.  
Schlatt slowly tails his gaze from his victim to Wilbur - staring deeply into his chestnut eyes, cutting through the dense and thick atmosphere of the forest. The glare sends a shiver down Wilbur's spine.

As first, his stare is deranged - disconnected flickers of lunacy gleaming in his cold-blooded, scheming eyes; but then that clouded sense of psychopathy clears, replaced by a more felonious feeling.  
It's as if he feels almost... _Guilty._

And then, he lets go of the kid.

  
✥ ✥ ✥

As Schlatt stands up, releasing his hold on Tommy, the boy falls from his grip and onto the floor. Soot notices his entire neck is coated with blood, and his face bruised and scratched by God knows what. The boy doesn't waste a second to use this opportunity as his chance to escape.

Watching as he runs off, Schlatt lets out an irritated groan.

"Woah," Wilbur blinks. "You actually did it."

If he has to be honest - he wasn't really expecting that. Interrogating Tommy seems like a more desirable option than confronting the mass-murderer - but he knows that skipping his chance to finally confront the killer would be like throwing away all your lottery money in a fire.

"Of course I did." Schlatt responds, hoarseness weaved on the edge of his voice. "After all, you're a much more appealing victim than him. And I'm _very_ picky."

He gives him a mischievous grin, revealing a set of teeth embedded with a light layer of dried blood. Wilbur grimaces at the sight, more so in fear than disgust. The very thought of confronting a man-eating... _thing_ \- it was like a nightmare coming to life.

"What's your name?" Schlatt asks him out of the blue, snapping Wilbur out from his daze. His name? Why would he want to know his name?

But he supposes that there isn't much harm in telling him that. Maybe his title of being a Detective will intimidate him.

"I'm.. Detective Wilbur Soot," he gulps, not looking away as his sight is locked in with Schlatt's. Clenching his grip on his slightly trembling pistol, he readjusts his posture in a more confident-looking stance as he holds the gun up again.  
 _"And I'm here to put you to justice."_

Schlatt doesn't flinch one bit at the remark. Instead, he lets out a scoff.

"So you're the Detective Soot that everyone's been going on about, huh? You're more attractive than I thought you'd be, I'll give you that."

Wilbur blinks in utter disbelief at this.

"But I'll just call you Wilbur. Frankly, I'd rather call you a name that doesn't sound like carbon remains. Besides, you look more like a twink than a Detective on your part anyway. It's really fucking pathetic to be fair, Wilbur. If you're going to be a Detective, at least try not to look like you came out of a fucking 80's Sherlock Holmes comic novel."

His petty and ridiculing comment hits him like a slap on the face - out of all the things Wilbur had experienced as being a Detective, this by far has been the time he'd felt the most insulted.  
Something about the way Schlatt expresses his sarcastic, mocking attitude grinds on his nerves. And making Wilbur angry was a rare occurrence.

You could make fun of the fact that the only times he's ever really had a conversation with a woman was on a dating simulator; and the fact that he spent most his highschool years learning dutch and memorising all the flags because that was his excuse for being antisocial? Yeah, couldn't give two shits, do what you want with that information. Yeah, his sense of humor sucks. Yeah, he named his pet fish "Milo" and ended up accidentally killing him a few seconds later. Make fun of all those if you want.

But as soon as you start mocking his choice in clothing, _that's where he has to draw the fucking line._

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Detective Soot snaps, shaking his head. "No, _what_ do you think you are? Devouring kids and breaking their legs with a mallet.. What the fuck is _wrong_ with you? Surely you can't be human!"

"Oh but I am." A seductive glint shimmers in his eyes as he shoots him a malicious grin. "I am just as human as you, Wilbur."

_He's human? God, he really is a cannibal!_

He grits his teeth together, a surge of superiority arising inside his chest as he marches over to the man. He jabs him with a finger in the chest as he spits with nothing but sheer raw disgust.

 _"You're sick._ I don't know who you are, or what you're trying to get out of this, but you have to stop. _You have to stop what you're doing right now, you sick son of a bitch."_

Face only a few inches away from his, Schlatt feels his relentless saliva spray onto his face. A sly grin curves along the corners of his mouth as he locks his malevolent, amber pools with Wilbur's from under his ragged, hazel hair.

"You want to stop me?"

His voice is deep and low, slithering enticingly into Wilbur's ears. " _Then try to stop this."_

Before Wilbur has any time to react, a pair of lips aggressively slam into his; Schlatt's hand runs up to the collar of his coat, forcefully pulling him in.

Wilbur's eyes immediately grow wide as he feels himself melt into the kiss; Schlatt's mouth is hot against his, and Wilbur finds himself unwillingly craving more of it - like as if Schlatt had unlocked a part of him that he's been trying to conceal for a long, long time. And that was his yearning for touch.

_No. No, no, no. This is wrong. Wilbur, what the hell are you thinking?! You shouldn't be enjoying this. You'll be as crazy as him if you did!_

Struggling, he tries to pull away from the kiss, but Schlatt grabs his wrists with an iron grip, halting him from moving. He pushes him to the floor, landing on top of him. He lifts a knee to his crotch-area, making Wilbur yelp in between the intertwining of their lips.

Not even waiting for Wilbur's consent, he rams his tongue into the opening of his mouth, exploring every single crevice behind his lips as he passionately makes out with him. Schlatt's cold hands run up his shirt, and he suddenly feels something hard poke his groin area - and this time, it isn't Schlatt's knee.   
A mixture of emotions run through and swirl from inside Wilbur's head.

He doesn't want this - he wants it to stop. He wants Schlatt to stop.  
But at the same time, he can't help but feel so... _Good._ And everything about the way he's feeling makes it feel even worse.

Schlatt's lips finally part from his, and he pants as he tries to breathe. Wilbur uses this as his opportunity to try escape from his hold underneath him.

"Let... Go of me-!!" he gasps, yelling breathlessly as Schlatt pulls apart for air. But of course, he doesn't oblige.

Instead, Schlatt pins him down by the neck, choking him. He starts to sensually grind on him, resulting in Wilbur letting out a groan. As he does so, Schlatt's other hand crawls along the grass floor, inching towards...

_The mallet._

"You can't get away from me." Schlatt whispers into his ear, grinning with pure malice glimmering in his erotic, lustful eyes. With one hand clutching onto the mallet beside him as he raises it into the air, and the other holding Wilbur down by the neck, his crazed eyes grow wide one last time as he laughs.  
" _You will never,_ _ **ever**_ _escape me!!"_

Wilbur watches frozen in horror - watching as the mallet comes crashing down, hitting-

Wilbur gasps, sucking in a large breath of air as he breaks his stare from the water down below. Schlatt and his mallet disappear, replaced by the reflection of his own face. A reassuring hand places itself on his shoulder, easing his fright.

"Sch.. Schlatt.." he stutters, half-murmuring, still numb with terror.

"You see what I mean, now?" says a voice from behind him. It's Schlatt. "It's real, isn't it? The River of Horrors is real."

Wilbur puts a hand to his chest, clutching his sweater as he takes in deep breaths, reminding himself that what he had just seen isn't real.

"So," Wilbur swallows, "looking into your own reflection.. It generates your darkest fears? So what I saw..."

"That's right," Schlatt nods, pulling out his camera as he takes a photo of the river. "Whatever you saw is what you fear the most."

He bends down, snapping another photo of the lake. "I _knew_ I wasn't going insane when I saw myself go bankrupt and homeless in my reflection. I _knew_ it wasn't a myth! C'mon Wil, I took all the photos we need. We're gonna be so fucking rich after this."

And as they walk out, Schlatt can't help but sneak a glance at his colleague, pondering to himself:

... _I wonder what he saw._  
  



	2. PT2 - VIRUS

**RIVER OF HORRORS  
** **PART 2**

**───── ❝ VIRUS ❞ ─────**

_I wonder what he saw,_ he wonders to himself.

When he had led Wilbur Soot to the River of Horrors in order to prove to him what he had seen _was_ in fact real, he couldn't help but fixate his intrigued gaze on the boy as he stared down into the reflection of the water, with an aloof look sprawled out along his distressed face.

Mesmerised, he just knelt there distantly, staring down at the water; austere and detached from reality itself as his mind and vision of the reflection clouded with a playing montage of his darkest nightmares coming to life. The look on his face was beyond what Schlatt could define as afraid — he looked downright _mortified,_ making him only even _more_ curious as to what the hell Wilbur could have been watching.

Sucking himself out from his internal thoughts, he settles back into reality as the two boys trail through the woods and away from the direction of the cursed river.

He glances over at Wilbur again, whose swatting tree branches and bushes out from his path with one hand. With the other, he's holding his slung-on backpack. His portentous lips are parted as he concentrates on his path ahead; his deep, chocolate eyes are cold and sharp — sharp enough to pierce through the thick blades of grass and bushes.

Schlatt debates silently to himself whether he should ask him or not.

_... Fuck it._

He decides to ask him.

"So, Wilbur," he starts, catching the attention of the taller boy, who turns around to meet with his inquisitive eyes. "What exactly _did_ yousee?"

He blinks dumbfoundly, as if processing what he had said for a few seconds. A solid moment passes before Wilbur's face then flushes a light shade of red.

"Is there a reason I need to tell you?" he replies back, flaring up little. As he snaps, he quickly turns away and continues his way through the forest. Schlatt raises an eyebrow at his sudden secretiveness.

"Hey, I told you what I saw." Schlatt frowns, speeding his pace to catch up to Wilbur. " _That's_ a pretty good reason to tell me."

"Not a good enough reason for my standards." Wilbur remarks, not turning to look at him; his eyes locked onto the trailing path of forests ahead.

Schlatt bites his lip for a second, his mind quickly trying to dig around for another ushering response.

"What could be worse than seeing yourself broke, Wil?" he shoves his hands into his pockets, shrugging as he speaks. "- $50,000 in debt, sitting outside in the rain on the streets with no more economical potential. Being broke is against my catholic religion, Wilbur. I very well can't think of anything that could beat that—"

"Well _I can!"_ Wilbur suddenly snaps, stopping completely; jerking his head to Schlatt as he abruptly lashes out, saliva spraying from his lips onto his forehead, causing the man to stumble back a little in surprise. For a few good seconds, Schlatt can see it — a flicker of unrestrained, fervent resentment, scorching aflame in his demanding eyes. His face dements itself, crumpling into a profound mean expression that Schlatt can only pinpoint as detestation. His fuming eyes dig right into his soul — a cruel, fuming snarl appearing on his lips as he blurted out.

He's _never_ seen him look at him like that before. _Never in his life._

And it's almost terrifying.

But quickly, Wilbur comes to realise this — almost immediately, his entire face shifts back, replaced with a painful look of sympathy and guilt. Ashamed, he turns away, subtly clenching his fist.

"I'm sorry." He apologises conscience-strikingly, his voice soft and low as he looks down. "... We should get moving. We're almost there."

He continues to walk, a little more robotically than he was before.  
Unable to speak for he's at loss of words, all Schlatt can bring himself to do is to follow behind him.  
  


✥ ✥ ✥  
  


"About time you came back!" erupts a loud, childish and slightly annoyed but more so curious voice, as the door swings open. A tall blonde boy jumps out from his seat on the couch, shooting even more questions at them, completely disregarding the exhausted look on both their faces. The dull atmosphere is lifted up a little bit.

"What even took you guys so long? You climbed up Mt Everest along the way? Went to fucking twitch con? Took over and conquered China? Tell me what happened! Did you f—!"

"We found it." Wilbur asserts calmly, halting him in his tracks. In contrast to Wilbur's plain expression, the boy's jaw drops, gaping in awe.

"Wait... What?" he blinks, baffled. Schlatt pulls out his camera, turning it on as he walks over to him.

"Exactly what he said, Tommy," he says, swiping to the photos he took of the lake to show the boy. "We've managed to navigate it."

Tommy makes a shocked, small open-mouthed expression as he looks at the screen, and quickly turns to Wilbur.

"HA!" Tommy exclaims , laughing mockingly whilst jabbing a finger at Wilbur. "Told you it was real! You're wrong, I'm right! I'm smart, you're dumb! Catch the fucking L Wilbur!"

"Fine, fine, I'll admit, I was wrong," Wilbur rolls his eyes, managing to crack a small smile from underneath his solemn straight face. "I'll take the L, just this once."

Tommy points his finger in the shape of an 'L' and raises it over his forehead to ridicule him. He looks over at Schlatt with a 'am-I-funny?' expression, which makes Schlatt can't help but let out a small chuckle. Tommy, a little too proud at himself for making Schlatt laugh at his joke, grins goofily, before returning to his neutral tone.

"Okay, being real here. How come on the _one_ _day_ something interesting happens, I can't go?" Tommy says. Schlatt can't tell if he's joking around or genuinely disappointed — but he doesn't have long to think about it before the boy abruptly spluttering into a fit of hoarse coughs, wiping his red, runny nose. Schlatt winces.

"Huh, you weren't kidding when you said you were sick." Schlatt raises an eyebrow, watching in mild distaste as Tommy blows his nose on a piece of used tissue.

"See?" Wilbur speaks up, walking over to the shelf to pull out a brand-new tissue box. He walks over to Tommy and hands it to him. "I couldn't let him come with me like _this_."

"No fucking _shit_ I'm sick! But, c'mon! I can still do stuff even when I do have a small cold. What's the worst that could happen?" Tommy groans, reluctantly accepting Wilbur's offer. "I blow myself to death?"

Now both Wilbur and Schlatt crack into a fit of laughter at this, but Tommy doesn't quite catch on.

"What? What did I say?" He kept on repeating, until eventually when he finally got it, he shrunk down and muttered an "oh, fuck. You guys are gross."

It was nice, mucking around a little in the Agency. Sometimes, being too serious or almost dying could get a little.. _Repetitive_.

Usually what would happen, was that Tommy and Wilbur would be the ones navigating — after all, that's how it always worked. As being part of the 'Myths and Cases Investigation Agency' (MCIA for short), the boys each assigned each other roles they would partake in.

Schlatt, Connor, and Ty were the Coordinators — they were the ones who would stay behind at the base and do all the researching. They'd discover hidden myths and legends to find solutions to, as well as digging up old unsolved criminal cases and files from the past and trying to uncover it's mysteries. It was a mixture between investigating cases that could be fake, and cases that have been unsolved or years.

Technoblade insisted on having a solo role — that being the Gunman. His role was to engage in cracking cases and busting-myths that usually involves head-on encounters. The physical stuff, you know? Which includes fighting creatures, monsters, people, or even the more hands-on work that requires more so physical strength than wits or intelligence.

And Wilbur and Tommy were the Detectives / Navigators. Their task was to do the actual investigating itself — using the information collected from the Coordinators, they'd set out and venture to try to navigate the unsolved case.

What had made the MCIA unique from the rest of investigation and detective agencies was its purpose: It determined what was reality, and what was beyond. Balancing between the fine line of fantasies and reality was the MCIA.

For a while now, the group was working on the 'River of Horrors' investigation. After gathering enough information, they were ready to send the Detectives out when Tommy had inconveniently caught a cold. Schlatt ended up filing in to be his replacement, while Tommy stayed back with Connor and Ty to help work on their next project. Schlatt and Wilbur both set out early in the morning and decided to split up to try to find the river faster.

Their plan had worked effectively, because Schlatt ended up finding the river first. Immediately, he called Wilbur with his phone to get him over — thus leading him to the discovered legend.

Usually, what the group tends to do (mainly for fun), was place bets on whether they think the legend was real or not. For this particular one, Wilbur was the only one who thought it was a hoax. Which led him to be a little skeptical at first.

But of course, after seeing his darkest nightmares in the reflection of the water, he was deemed to be incorrect.

"Alright, well that's another myth we can cross from the list of cases to determine." Wilbur calls out, scribbling out something on the notepad he just pulled out from his coat's pocket. Letting out a tiresome sigh, he mumbles to them. "Now that we know it exists, it's all the matter of finding out more information about it. It's origins are a good start."

"So it's true then?" Tommy asks, "you guys actually saw a vision of your darkest _nightmares?!"_

"Well, I wouldn't call being broke a daydream." Schlatt mutters under his breath.

"Your darkest nightmare is being _broke?!"_ Tommy gasps, and if he has to be honest, Schlatt didn't expect him to hear that. "That's so wise.."

Tommy looks at Wilbur, tugging at his shirt. "So? What did you see? Tell me what you saw, Wil!"

Continuing to pester him, Wilbur groans, swatting him away. "Fuck off, Tommy."

"Uaerghh, ' _fuck off'!"_ Tommy mimics him in a poor, deep british accent, snapping at him. " _'Fuck off Tommy', 'get lost Tommy', 'shut the fuck up Tommy'!_ That's all you do, you just tell me to fuck off all the time. _'Oh hey guys, my name is Wilbur Soot and I'm a frail old british dirty crime boy and my only personality telling Tommy to fuck off!"_

 _"Tom— !!"_ Wilbur's about to yell, when he's intervened by a shout with an immense amount of urgency calls from downstairs:

" _Tommy! You have to see this right now!!"_

It's Connor — one of the Coordinators, alongside Ty and Schlatt himself. Oh, that's right. The others don't know that Wilbur and Schlatt are back yet.

Tommy whips around, and doesn't waste a second before shoving the tissue in his pocket, darting down the stairs. Wilbur gives Schlatt an anxious glance, before breaking off into a desperate sprint after Tommy.

Schlatt just walks.

✥ ✥ ✥

"What is it?!" Tommy yells, bursting through the doors to the Research Base. Connor's standing in front of the big projector, his eyes glued to the screen above. On the screen is a complex-looking chart with statistics and a graph.

Around the room is a bunch of desks filled with papers, books, computers, and boxes of files. In the centre of the room is a large, circular table — the Stuff-ble, is what it's called (name created by Tommy, after quoting Ty's "why is there so much stuff on this table?").

Connor breaks his gaze from the screen, jolting to the others. He acknowledges Wilbur and Schlatt are suddenly there, but he doesn't bother questioning — for what he wants to tell them is much more urgent.

"We've managed to find the statistics!" he declares, pointing up at the screen. "And you wouldn't _believe_ what me and Ty found out!!"

Schlatt opens his mouth to ask what the hell he's actually talking about, but it looks like Wilbur had beaten him to it.

"Wait, wait, I'm sorry, _what?_ Statistics for _what?"_

"Oh, right," Connor realises. "You were out. Welcome back by the way, Schlatt and Wilbur. Sucks that Tommy was sick, haha. Schlatt does a way better job at collecting the information. What took you guys so long anyway? Did—?"

"Fucks sake, ut the crap _Conar_." Schlatt snaps hurriedly, "just get to the point already."

The tension is too thick for him to stay in much longer. Connor stumbles back, stuttering.

"O-Oh, yeah, sorry! Well, while you guys were gone, me, Tommy and Ty were investigating the current stats of the virus. Remember how there was a new virus discovered last week? Yeah, well, it's spreading. It's spreading faster than what we originally expected — and it's worse than what the news made it out to be, too."

Both Schlatt and Wilbur find themselves slowly turning to Tommy, who had frozen in the spot with a piece of tissue stuck up one of his nostrils. Tommy blinks, glancing at the two blankly before noticing.

"Oh, c'mon. _Really_ guys? It's just a cold."

"Tommy wouldn't have it, don't worry." Connor quickly says, "it wouldn't make any sense if he does, anyway. Because that's where the stats come in."

He gestures towards the screen, and Schlatt walks closer to see. There's a line chart aligned with 'AGES' across the bottom and 'INFECTION RATE' along a column. The line drastically sprouts up at around the 25-40 age mark.

"Ty managed to hack into the disclosed information on the virus that haven't been released to the public," Connor starts, "Look, the infection rate seems more higher in older people. Tommy's only 16."

"Pretty weirdchamp, if you ask me." Tommy mumbles with folded arms, analyzing the screen. Connor raises a finger at his direction.

"Actually, that's not even the weird part. The _weirdest_ part is—"

"I'm back!!"

Connor whips around, and bursting through the doors is a young boy wearing a pink hoodie with a white bandana tied around his head; It's none other than Ty, and he's waving a large piece of paper in hand. Dashing inside, out of breath, he runs to Connor.

"I got it! Sorry I took a bit, the printer ran out of ink!" Ty calls, handing the paper over to Connor, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead.

"Oh, perfect timing," Connor smiles. "Thanks Ty!"

"No problem!" he grins back, turning to raise an eyebrow at both Schlatt and Wilbur's sudden presence.

Connor then moves out the way, heading over to the Stuffble to lay out the spreadsheet Ty had given him. He ushers the rest of the group to come over, and within seconds everybody is crowding around the spreadsheet on the table.

"Okay, now here comes the weird part," Connor starts, trailing a finger over to the stats with a delicate finger. "The infection rates are higher in older people, right? But get this.."

He points at a certain statistic. The page reads 'DEATH TOLL' across, and 'AGE' vertically.

"The death toll is higher in ages 10-15. So how come kids with three times less the number of infections compared to adults, die more? That's what I don't get."

"The fuck..?" Schlatt murmurs, re-reading the spreadsheet over and over again in hopes of being able to understand somewhat of what is going on. But it's futile — he's not able to wrap his head around whatever the _fuck_ is going on, and _how._

"That _is_ weird.." Wilbur mumbles too, more so musing to himself.

Schlatt tries to think about this for a moment. It's clear that according to the statistics, adults have a higher infection rate. But the death toll is higher in kids?

His eyes dart to the line chart on the screen — there have been a total of 50 cases within their area, all of them sitting around the 25-40 age mark. The death toll is at 30, but most of those are actually not those seemingly _infected._ The first thing he considers is that adults must be immune to the virus' effects.

Maybe perhaps the symptoms weren't present in the adults, and the sickness would pass onto the children and then _they'd_ die from it before results are able to be recorded. In fact, speaking of which.. When _were_ the stats recorded?

"Yeah, it is weird," Ty speaks up, stopping Schlatt from asking his question. "And we just discovered this now, only a few minutes ago. No wonder police are trying to conceal as much information about this as they can... If this was released to the public, the world would..."

" _Fall into shambles."_ Schlatt finishes, his deadpan voice sending the rest of the room into silence. Ty whispers a little 'yeah', before Wilbur's deep voice shatters the quietness like a baseball being thrown through glass.

"Do you know what the virus _does_ , exactly?"

"I think it kills people."

"Pretty sure we established that already, Sherlock." Schlatt mutters, shooting him a somewhat disapproved glare.

"Well.. Uh, obviously it kills people," Connor chuckles anxiously, correcting himself as he flushes a little from embarrassment, "but how? No idea. All we know is that the symptoms are stomach aches. But how that is associated with the deaths of younger people is completely unknown to us."

 _Hm... Stomach pains._ _Gastrointestinal problems then?_

"Wait, question!" Tommy calls out, shooting his arm up into the air like a little kid who found out the answer to a question in preschool. But he talks immediately after anyway. "Are we gonna just abandon the River of Horrors investigation?"

Everyone falls quiet again after hearing this — not even _Schlatt_ knows how to respond to that.

They all turn to Wilbur to look for an answer, since he is the one who usually takes the lead role most of the time. Wilbur, with a hand to his chin; eyes averted down to his feet; and his eyebrows furrowed, hums softly to himself as he submerges deep into his thoughts. He clicks his tongue after a few seconds, and looks up to meet everyone's.

"No, we won't." he asserts. "A discovery like the River is too rare and unusual to abandon. We'll split. Half of us will work on the virus case, while the other on the myth."

He gestures to Schlatt, Connor and Ty — the Schlatt & Co trio.

"You guys, the Coordinators — you'll stay here and focus on the virus. Find out it's origins, causes, more symptoms and possibly even a cure. We're not medics, so I don't expect you really to find a cure. But just keep us all updated on it, OK?"

Wilbur then turns to Tommy. "Me, you, and hopefully Techno — we'll work on the River. We'll set out tomorrow morning so we can collect more info on it. How does that sound, everyone?"

There are a bunch of nods, thumbs up, and 'POGCHAMPS' around the room. Wilbur cracks a prideful smile, probably flattering himself at his leadership skills again. But the moment is ruined shortly after.

"Haha! Suck it, pink boy!" Tommy laughs at Ty, "I'm doing the fun mission!"

Ty just frowns at him, making Wilbur raise an eyebrow, unamused.

"I don't think Ty would mind switching places with you, Tommy," Wilbur smirks.

"Wait, no! Fuck, no no no! I'm sorry! I take it all back!"

Everybody laughs, apart from Tommy.

✥ ✥ ✥

****_TECHNOBLADE_  
  


A small rock disturbs the tranquility of the clear waters, sending large ripples to erupt from the source of the stone. Techno sighs to himself, blinking rapidly as he snaps himself out from his daze.

"So that's my 'darkest nightmare', huh?" he mutters lowly to himself, eyeing the stream of the River below his feet. _Interesting._

With a swift hand, he reaches down to his bag, and pulls out an empty glass jar. He bends down and scoops a handful of the river's water inside, before tightly screwing the lid back on.

"Well then," he hums, " _I guess I've got some work to do."_


	3. PT3 - CANNIBALISTIC

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY, ON:  
>  \- "So, Wilbur," he starts, catching the attention of the taller boy, who turns around to meet with his inquisitive eyes. "What exactly did you see?"
> 
> \- "Is there a reason I need to tell you?"
> 
> \- As being part of the 'Myths and Cases Investigation Agency' (MCIA for short), the boys each assigned each other roles they would partake in.
> 
> \- "It's true then?" Tommy asks, "you guys actually saw a vision of your darkest nightmares?!"
> 
> \- "So that's my 'darkest nightmare', huh? Well then," Techno hums, "I guess I've got some work to do."

**RIVER OF HORRORS  
** **PART 3**

**───── ❝ CANNIBALISTIC ❞ ─────**

“Urghhhh.”

A pained grumble slips unconsciously out from his mouth, and he awakes with an unusually strained throat. Weakly cracking a drowsy eye open, Wilbur finds himself laying inches away from Schlatt’s face, who happens to be sleeping right beside him. 

While his gut exigents at him to retract away, his body refuses to move. Instead, his body rests unmoving, blinking as he feels Schlatt’s warm breath flit against his face; touched by the shades of shock, a feverish flush assaults him. Should he do something?

Without thinking, he bobs his head a little more forward, observing every little aspect of Schlatt’s face, feeling his own heat up a little at the thought — the way his soft, chocolate hair brush dishevelled over his face; how his nose twitches slightly as he breathes in; how his soothing, peaceful eyes flood his senses with waves of tranquillity as he sleeps.

As he gazes at him, the image of Schlatt from Wilbur’s nightmare back at the river flashes idly into his mind— a distorted image of a maniacal, bloodlust cannibal.  
His breathing hitches. Comparing him to the Schlatt he’s watching now — They are nothing alike…

_ Luckily, it’s just a nightmare. _

Suddenly, Schlatt’s left eye groggily flutters open. He glances at Wilbur for a split second, motionless. Before suddenly snapping to his senses.

“Woah, woah, woah!” he exclaims, shoving Wilbur out his face, to which responds with a yelp of his own. “You’re a little close there, Wil. Too close!”

“Uh—” Wilbur stutters, fumbling over his words. “I— I didn’t.. I didn’t mean—!”

“Were you watching me in my sleep?”His utters are profoundly accusing, but before he gets the chance to question him further, he stops. He takes a look around him. “Wait… Why the fuck are we on the floor?”

Somehow, Wilbur hadn’t noticed this until now.

_Wait, he’s right… But... I could have sworn I was in bed last night._

He glances over at his bed, which is all the way at the other side of the room. There’s no way he could have fallen out, the bed’s too far. So that must mean either he did pass out on the floor, which is unlikely, or…

Someone must have moved him.  
And there’s only one person in this base who would be idiotic enough to do that. Immediately, the name appears in his mind.

“Tommy.”

Schlatt’s eyes meet his as Wilbur speaks, and just shrugs casually. Good enough excuse. Brushing it off, Wilbur crawls over to a nearby drawer, and uses it as a source to heave himself up. But as he stumbles to his feet, a sudden surge of pain slithers up his arm; it’s incredibly sharp, like as if someone had jabbed a knife through his forearm. 

Another groan, followed by him collapsing to the floor as his arm mingles with the ever-present pulsing pain. He grips his arm tightly. “Ow, Jesus Christ!”

“Fuck’s wrong with you?” Schlatt retorts.

“My arm…” Wilbur groans again, “it.. H… Hurts..!”

Schlatt tries to stand as well, when he’s also greeted by a punch of his own fierce pain, and a low grumble slips from his throat—much louder than Wilbur’s. Judging by his reaction, Wilbur can guess he also feels the same.  
Right then, the door to their dorm room swings open, and in steps none other than Tommy himself, wearing an irritated frown on his face. He’s dressed in a beige-and-red coat, shorts and boots.

“What the fuck are you guys moaning about?!” he exclaims, watching the two with obvious disgust as they both lay sprawled on the floor letting out questionable noises. Schlatt’s the first to react, by sitting up immediately.

After a dragging delay, he answers sophisticatedly. “I can whole-heartedly, on God, assure you, Innit, that it is not what it looks like.”

Wilbur can only nod quickly at his reply, whilst also silently praying that Tommy isn’t going to say what he thinks he’s going to say.

“... So you guys weren’t fucking each other then?”

God fucking dammit, nevermind. 

There’s a beat of awkward silence.

“Did it really sound like that?” Wilbur eventually asks.

“Yeah, it did. Actually, you know what? I don’t even want to know the answer to why.”

“Well is this why you ran into our room?” Schlatt exasperates, shooting him a spiteful glare. “To ask us if we were… ‘fucking’?”

A complacent smile curls along Tommy’s face for a moment, before returning back to his usual demeanour. “Not really. I actually came in here to tell you —!”

He points at Wilbur.

“— to take me to the River of Horrors!”

Wilbur slumps. “Are you still sick?”

On perfect timing, Tommy lets out a loud sneeze. He wipes his nose quickly, tentatively shaking his head. Schlatt sighs.

“Just take the kid anyway,” he mutters, standing up as he discreetly rubs his arm, gliding over to the door. “Not like he’ll do anything useful if he stayed here at home, anyway.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?!”

“Nothing. Anyways, I’ll be working on the Virus case with Connor and Ty, later.”

He walks out the door, leaving Tommy and Wilbur to be the only occupants of the room. A hopeful smile etches onto Tommy’s face, and he looks at Wilbur with innocent eyes. He exhales.

“Okay, I’ll get ready then. Go grab the bag.”

✥ ✥ ✥

“So, how did the river look? What was it like seeing it?! Was it cool? I bet it was cool.. Did it have some sort of weird supernatural glow to it!? Also how mythical does it look on a scale of 1 to—”

“It just looked like every normal river, Tommy.”

He stops talking, his never-ending list of inculcating questions finally halting to a pause. To be honest, it did look pretty mystical, but he figured saying that it was would just make Tommy ask even more annoying questions. So he decided to spare himself from that.  
Wilbur ducks below a tree, and swats a branch out his path, clearing the way for Tommy behind him. They’ve been walking through the maze of trees and forests for a while now, but as a Navigator, Wilbur was used to it. After years of training, finding his way to and from locations had grown to be a breeze for him — Tommy included.

“Okay, okay…” Tommy mumbles, pausing for a long minute before hesitantly raising another question. “... So, what did you see?”

Not this again. “I thought I made it clear already that I wasn’t going to tell you.”

“Aw c’mon, that was yesterday. I thought that maybe today…”

“What? That today would be different?” Wilbur scoffs, not allowing his focus to leave from the trail ahead. “Sometimes I wonder if all these years of working with me, you don’t really know me at all."

Unanticipated silence paints the air again, as the two patter quietly along the dirt. Tommy breathes out.

“... It was bad, right?”

Wilbur purses his lips. “Well, it is supposed to be a nightmare.”

Tommy presses on. “But if it’s so bad that you won’t tell anyone — not even me — then it’s got to be really bad, huh?”

He thinks about it for a moment. In all honesty, Wilbur hadn’t found it particularly bad. It wasn’t like he would be in a cold sweat every time it’s mentioned, and he wouldn’t start shaking at the mere thought of it. But it was more so quite… Difficult, to explain. And sure as hell embarrassing, too.

But his flow of thoughts jerks to a standstill as Tommy’s shouts ring in his ears again. The boy runs ahead of him, enthusiastically exclaiming. “Is this it?! The river?!”

As Tommy kicks back one more bush blocking their way, a narrow stream reveals itself through the arms of the forest. Wilbur steps through, finally getting a clear view of the waters.

It’s the River all right, there’s no doubt. However, it’s different to how he first saw it.

The first time he saw it, it held a mystical feel to it. It’s crystal-clear waters had shimmered enticingly underneath the afternoon rays of sunlight; unlike its surroundings, it was full of life. Sprightly, blossoming life. One foot near the river and it had felt like Wilbur was being wrapped by some sort of enchanting aura, drawing him closer and closer to the line separating him from reality and magic itself.  
But now — looking at the river now — it feels cold. It’s waters are barren and hollow. A shudder runs through him, as if he’s been touched by a midwinter chill.

No, this river isn’t alive like it had been before. It’s dead.

A sinking feeling tangles in Wilbur’s gut, and he’s filled with a foreboding sense of fear. Something bad is going to happen. _He can feel it._

“The River of Horrors,” he swallows, nodding to the water. “Go on, Tommy. Take a look. Look into your reflection.”

His words falter as he speaks. Tommy, on the contrary, doesn’t seem to take notice. Cheerily, he runs to the ledge, a little too excited for someone who's going to watch their worst nightmare play in their head. He takes off his backpack, and chucks it to the ground.

“Wish me luck, Wil!” he smiles, concentrating into the water as he gives him a thumbs-up. Soon, an eerie silence replaces Tommy’s exuberant spirit, and Wilbur is infused with a flush of dreadful anticipation. He walks over beside Tommy, watching his face observantly to see his reaction. He can’t see what he’s seeing — but he can see how he’s feeling. 

For a minute or so, Tommy’s facial expressions are unmoving, and enigmatic. His lips are sealed shut and his eyes are focused in the reflection. There’s no sign of distressed or anxious emotion on his face — just a glazed-over, hypnotised look of deep concentration. His face is completely unreadable.

And then, Wilbur sees it — a flicker of terror, fleeting across his eyes. His face then distorts into an expression Wilbur can only read as complete mortification. Tommy’s breathing picks up, heavy under his breath as his eyes widen. Beads of sweat are visible on his forehead. His lower lip begins to tremble.

_Oh no, it’s happening. **The peak of the nightmare.**_ Wilbur feels a rising anxiety flare up in his chest as he watches Tommy’s morphing expression, and the thought strikes him:

Is this what Schlatt had seen in Wilbur when he looked into the river? Is this the face Wilbur had made? If it was… How the hell had Schlatt managed to stay so calm?!  
He fights back the gnawing urge to knock Tommy back into his senses and snap him out of it — it’s torture seeing him like this. Knowing that he’s probably being traumatised out of his mind, yet he can’t do anything about it…

Tommy’s hands are shaking violently now, and every single facial feature on him is twisted in utmost horror. A thin stream of tears runs down his face, making Wilbur’s eyes grow even wider.

“No…” he hears Tommy only barely heave out the murmur, as if he had lost his voice but is trying desperately to make a sound. “Ty…”

His voice is raspy and shaky as he whispers his name. Oh God, it’s something to do with Ty. What the hell is he seeing?!  
He repeats his name over and over again, the look of extreme fear only growing in his eyes, until eventually Wilbur can’t take it anymore. 

“Tommy! Tommy, snap out of it!” Wilbur shouts, yanking him back by the shoulders. Grabbing him to stand up, Wilbur faces Tommy. Unlike Schlatt and himself, he’s only a kid. A kid can only take so much.

“There’s no way…” Despite Tommy’s eyes being shifted to meet Wilbur’s, his gaze feels empty and aloof, like he’s staring off into space. His voice is detached and cold. “There’s no way… There’s no way he would have lived… There’s no way… He would have survived that…”

He’s still dazed. Left with no other choice now, Wilbur forced himself to raise his hand...

… And slaps him hard against the face.

_ This isn’t child abuse, this isn’t child abuse, this isn’t— _

Finally, Tommy blinks, and he’s snapped back into reality. “Wilbur…”

His breathing is still heavy, and his face is shiny with sweat. Trying to recover, he stumbles back. 

“Tommy, careful!” Wilbur exclaims, realising that he’s only a few inches away from stepping over the ledge. “You’re gonna—!”

The alarming loud sounds of water splashing cuts him from finishing his warning.

✥ ✥ ✥

“OH SHIT, TOMMY!!”

His cries are unheard, as he watches his friend fall back and sink into the water in panic. He hears Tommy gasp and choke on water.

_ Oh God, this can’t be happening. **This really can’t be happening!!** _

Out of pure impulse, Wilbur dives into the river in an attempt to try to save him. As soon as his head is underwater, his ears block itself under the pressure of the water — it’s a horrid feeling, but that’s the least of his worries right now. Tommy can’t die. That’s what he’s worrying about.  
Despite him not being that heavy, he’s sinking fast — too fast. Desperately, Wilbur uses all his strength to swim after him. When he’s in arms length from him, he reaches out his hand — but finds that Tommy doesn’t grab it. The realisation hits him dully.

He’s unconscious.

This makes things a lot harder — he’s going to have to lift him up without any support.

After a few seconds, Tommy’s fallen body hits the bottom of the river floor. Followed quickly after, Wilbur swims to the bottom, too. The first thing he notices is that the bottom of the surface is glowing a radiating shade of muddy yellow. It’s also incredibly sharp and rocky — and he fears that Tommy might have wounded himself on that.  
However, he can’t allow himself to be distracted now. Quickly, he throws Tommy’s body over his back and wraps the boy’s arms around his neck. With his left hand, he grabs Tommy’s wrist to hold him up, while trying to swim up with the other. 

He feels his lungs being overwhelmed with water, fatiguing him from swimming up with his full potential. No, he can’t go out now. Not like this.

Finally nearing the surface of the water, he stops, and grabs Tommy’s body with both hands as he uses the last of his strength to fling him up. Successful, Tommy’s thrown out of the water and onto the surface. Using up the last of his oxygen, Wilbur just barely manages to swim up and out of the river.

Crawling onto land, he splutters up handfuls of river water. Wiping his eyes, he hurriedly makes his way over to Tommy, who is not responding. He flips him over to lie on his back, and spontaneously starts to perform CPR. 

To his relief, after a couple of hopeless compressions, Tommy gargles and coughs up more water. _Thank God, he’s alive._

Wilbur rolls over to the floor, recovering himself. After a few painfully long seconds of choking up water and gasping for air, he eventually does regain his breath.  The first thing he does is crawl over to the bag Tommy had luckily put down before looking into his reflection. He opens it, and pulls out his phone, before quickly dialling Ty’s number. Ty usually always answers his phone.

Just as he expected, Ty picks up immediately.

“Hell—?”

“Ty! Get the MCIA-Mobile and come over here right now!” 

“W—Wait, Wilbur? Slow down, what’s—?”

“And make sure to bring the med-kit with you!”

“But I can’t dr—”

**“I don’t fucking care if you can’t drive! You need to get over here right now, we have a _critical injury!”_**

“O-Okay!”

Ty hangs up quickly, and Wilbur collapses onto his back, resting the phone on his stomach.  
Fortunately, they had all set up trackers connected to each other's phones, so Wilbur didn’t have to tell Ty his location since his phone already knows.

Worried, he cranes his head over to Tommy; relief colours his face as he watches Tommy on all fours, catching his breath. Despite him breathing, there’s still a distant look on his face, as if he’s only half-conscious amidst the situation.

Then, Wilbur stops, his gaze locks onto something bright along Tommy’s back. He picks himself up and squirms closer to the boy, noticing his entire back is scratched and his coat is ripped.  
But more importantly, he sees blood gushing out from his open wound — so it turns out the rocks at the bottom of the river floor had cut him after all. Tommy’s injury might be more serious than he thought.

Wilbur turns to the backpack on the floor, and opens it, digging through it’s contents to try find something — anything — that could help cease the pain his injury may be causing him. But to his dismay, it appears to be that he’s left all the first-aid supplies back at the base.  
He figures, however, that now is the good chance to obtain some of the water in a container to examine later on at the HQ. He pulls out a small, empty glass jar from the bag, and drags himself over to the River, before scooping a jar full of it’s fluids all the while avoiding looking directly into it. Once finished, he screws the lid back on it, and places it carefully back in the bag.

Within a few minutes, a small vehicle abruptly shoots itself through the trees, landing a couple of meters away from the two guys. Just as promised, Ty had arrived with the MCIA-Mobile.

“Get in!” the boy yells as he rolls down the window. Wilbur nods, slinging Tommy over his shoulders as he crawls up to his two feet. Grabbing the bag with his free hand, he hobbles over to the vehicle.

It’s basically a car, except it only has only two seats, and a massive back boot. When Wilbur reaches it, he throws open the boot and pitches the 16 year old inside. He beckons Ty to go to the back to help Tommy, while he takes the wheel to drive.

As Wilbur kickstarts the car, the engine revs before accelerating. Once they’re back on track, he lets out a deep sigh of relief.

“He fell into the river and injured his back pretty badly,” Wilbur starts, already predicting that sooner or later Ty would have asked what happened. “I think he might also have a mild concussion when he hit the ground, because he’s not 100% responsive to his surroundings.”

There’s a few seconds of silence as Ty checks his pulse. He turns on a flashlight he brought with the med-kit, and checks the dilation of his pupils. He nods.

“He has a concussion,” he assertively replies. “He definitely needs to rest…”

_Thought so._

Wilbur swerves the vehicle to a sharp left, and as he does so the pain he had felt in his arm earlier twitches. Unconsciously, a light groan slips from his mouth.

“Wilbur, are you okay?” Ty asks anxiously, hearing the sound.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” His teeth are gritted as he says that, eyes focused on the trail. “My arm is just a little… sore. That’s all.”

“So your arm hurts too?”

Without moving his head, Wilbur’s eyes dart as far to the left, trying to see Ty from the corners of his eye. Did he just hear that correctly?

“Wait, what?”

“Uh, nothing… Umm… Nevermind.”

He shakes it off, and continues to drive. “Well, anyways, I retrieved some of the water in a glass jar, so later on tonight I’ll show you and Connor, since you’re the only ones who haven’t seen your nightmares yet.”

“Do we have to see them? I mean, isn’t the mission basically complete already since your goal was to determine if it was real or myth?” Ty’s queries are innocent.

“Technically, it is. But I’ve had a weird hunch that our ‘nightmares’ might have some sort of meaning behind it. I want everyone to try seeing their own out first. After all, you’re never given a chance like this in the normal world.”

Ty nods, suggesting to Wilbur that it was more than a valid reason. Still, Ty’s questions linger on.

“So what about Techno? He hasn’t seen it either, are we going to show him?”

That’s a fair point — in fact, Techno’s been gone for quite a few days now. But the thought doesn’t worry Wilbur. Most of Techno’s missions are like this, and he’s barely ever at the base. But he’s proven himself multiple times to be an important asset to the team.

“Well Techno’s probably not gonna be home for a while since he’s working on his own individual case.” Wilbur’s reply is honest and sincere. Speaking of which, he could really use his help right now.

Shaking his head, he shifts the road of conversation. “Moving on, what about you? What’s going on with the virus?”

Ty taps his lips. “Oh, right, the Virus case. Uh, we found a lot more info on it now than we had yesterday. And while you two were gone, we had the plan of sending Schlatt and Connor out to the outside world to investigate.”

‘The Outside World’ — it was what they had often referred to as reality. This is because the MCIA Headquarters was located in a secluded area in the forests away from society. The only times they’d ever go to the outside world is when they’re stocking back up on supplies, like food. But other than that, they were pretty focused on their own tasks.  
However, over the years they’ve made quite the name for themselves. They’re pretty well known by the people to be the secret ‘organisation’ that debunks legends and solves old criminal cases. Apparently, there are rumours that even the Government knows of their existence.

Wilbur’s heart drops as Ty finishes his remark. “Well that’s not going to end well.”

This time, he can’t tell himself if he’s being sarcastic or serious.

Those two — Schlatt and Connor — were complete idiots when they’re together. God knows what they’ll get themselves into. Hopefully they won’t get themselves directly involved with the Virus.

“They promised to be safe and not muck around.” Judging by the complete faith Ty holds in his voice, Wilbur has a hunch that Ty doesn’t know that it’s actually possible to break promises. “They said they’ll be on the down-low. All they’re gonna do is take a look at how the Outside world is coping with the newly found virus. They’re gonna be back really soon… Hopefully.”

And there it is — the weariness he was waiting to hear in his voice. So Ty does know a promise can be easily broken after all.

✥ ✥ ✥

“Good, you stitched him up.”

The two are kneeling over Tommy, who was resting with a towel wrapped around him on the bed. His entire stomach and back is wrapped in bandages. Wilbur, already changed into a new set of clothes with a towel over his head, exhales effusively. A prideful smile curls along Ty’s face.

“Yep! I applied some oils on it before sealing it with bandages to make the healing process quicker. It’s a really nasty cut, Wilbur. How did he get it?”

As soon as he asks this, mental images of the rocks he had seen earlier idly flitter across his consciousness. The incident happening only a couple hours ago, the memories he held were as vivid and clear as the light of day.

“There were some really sharp, super-natural looking rocks at the bottom,” Wilbur mumbles, “and he scraped his back against them pretty badly.”

Ty winces. “Owch…”

“I’m gonna go store the jar in the Specimens room.” Wilbur announces, turning around. “Tell me when Tommy wakes up, and then you can tell us the information you’ve found out. We need to make sure Tommy’s awake when he hears this.”

“Okay!”

Then, Wilbur exits the bedroom. 

✥ ✥ ✥

“Tommy’s awake!”

Ty runs into the Specimens Laboratory Wilbur is in; he’s sitting on a stool, taking notes in his notepad. A quarter of the water in the glass jar is inside a test tube, which is placed in a tube set beside Wilbur’s desk. Wilbur turns spins around, stifling back a surprised yelp. It’s been almost an hour.

Without saying a word, Wilbur shoots up from his seat and darts out the lab to the bedroom, Ty following his lead. Arriving to the entrance of the room, he kicks open the bedroom door.

“Tommy!” Wilbur cries out, running over to the boy. He pulls him into an unanticipated, relieved embrace. “You’re awake! I’m so glad you’re okay.”

Tommy’s body stiffens, and he quickly shoves him off. “H-Hey! What are you doing?! And… Why am I covered with bandages?!”

A wave of emotions — relief, gratefulness, anger — flood his senses, and he lets out an eccentric, hysterical chuckle. “You fell into the river, remember? You got a concussion after hitting the bottom! And you also scratched your back pretty badly.”

Tommy blinks, profound confusion colouring his dazed face. “Uh… That explains… Some of it.”

“Well thank God you’re still alright,” Ty waves his arm at him from behind Wilbur, whose standing at the door’s entrance. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. My back is a little sore, but that’s all, really.”

Wilbur takes notice that Tommy isn’t sneezing or coughing anymore — perhaps his cold went away after taking a rest. It makes sense really, considering Tommy’s sleep schedule was messed up. 

“Well now that you’re both here, I can finally tell you what we discovered about the virus!”

Ty gestures the to the two boys to follow him downstairs to the Research Base. 

After closing the Research Base’s door behind him, they all arrive into the room.

“So, after further conducted research…” Ty begins, turning on the projector to show a statistic graph. “We had come to the deduction that the Virus actually does cause symptoms.”

Wilbur nods along, observing the graph on the screen. Tommy is fidgeting with one of Schlatt’s pens he had left on the table.  
Ty waits for a response, but the room is silent, so he continues.

“It causes severe gastrointestinal problems, which is linked specifically to the human digestive system.”

_So my guess was half accurate,_ Wilbur mulls. Tommy speaks up.

“What’s that meant to mean?”

“It means, Tommy, **that the Virus alters the human diet.”**

There it is again. It’s that sinking feeling in Wilbur’s gut. It feels as if his heart fell into the pits of his stomach.

An uneasy silence encases their surroundings, and Wilbur feels himself experiencing a touch of despondency. He holds his breath.

After the pause, Ty elicits once again. “The cause for that specifically is still completely unknown to us, so we can only assume that the Virus somehow made its way to the bloodstream, before affecting the way the human body reacts when consuming certain nutrients.”

It only just occurs to Wilbur now how mature Ty sounds when he’s in role of being the Coordinator. It’s as if his innocent, child demeanour completely vanishes when he gets serious.

“You mean when you’re infected, you just… Can’t eat food?”

Tommy is the one who asked that. Ty shrugs. “Sort of. But then after more research, we came up with a good theory. A theory that — according to Schlatt — is ‘probably, maybe, no most definitely, highly likely correct’. And that is that this Virus…”

He presses a button on the remote he has in his hands, which switches to the next screen on the projector. On the screen, is a photo of a dead human body. Their torso looks to be clawed out, and their ribcage is visible from underneath their torn flesh.

“… **_Turns humans into man-eating machines.”_**

The air around Wilbur freezes. He feels his heart stop.

_ Man-eating machines. _

Simultaneously, graphic memories of his nightmare flash into his mind; images of Schlatt holding Tommy by the neck. His face smeared with human flesh and his teeth dripping of thick blood. No.

It can’t be. This… This is just a coincidence, right? It’s a nightmare. The River of Horrors only projects you your darkest nightmares, right? There’s no way that whatever he had seen… is actually _real._

“Remember how the infection rate was higher in adults?” Ty continues. “But the death toll was higher for younger people? Well, we managed to figure out how that works.”

“How?” Tommy’s leaning in, listening with intent ears on what Ty has to say.

“That’s because it turns out, more of the adults got infected. Why? No clue, maybe people of older age are more prone to it? But get this, the virus doesn’t actually _kill_ the infected. The virus makes the infected, _kill._ And what easier target is there to devour than children themselves?”

Face turning white, Tommy gulps. “Oh _fuck_ , that means…”

“Yeah. **Kids are being devoured by these cannibals.”**

Wilbur finally manages to catch his voice again. “No wonder why Schlatt and Connor had left you behind here at the base. If you were to have gone with them…”

“Yeah,” Ty nods. “You finally get it now, huh? People like me and Tommy have a higher risk of dying— Wait… Wilbur? Are you okay?”

Ty and Tommy both turn to glance at him, and realise that his face is a ghostly pale. Beads of sweat are trickling down his forehead, and his pupils are shaking in his eyes. He’s in a cold sweat; thoughts are swirling around endlessly in his mind.

 _Why is this happening? What is going on? I’ve seen this before, I know it. In my nightmare. But how? It has to be a coincidence… No, get your head out the clouds, Wil. You have to focus. You should be asking_ **_how._ ** _How did a virus like this manage to exist? And how does it spread to infect others? Agh, none of this makes sense…_

He snaps back into reality. “Yeah, no. Uh, I’m fine, don’t worry. It’s just… This is a lot more serious than I thought.”

“You think?” Tommy frowns, unamused.

“Tommy.” Wilbur starts. “We’re going to have to put the River of Horrors on hold.”

“Wait, what?” his voice inflects, the suggestion catching him quite off guard. “B-But, you said we weren't going to abandon it! We... We just barely scratched the surface, Wil! We— We still gotta find it’s origins, and what’s inside t—“

“No, our goal now is for all of us to work together on this virus.” He turns to him, shooting him a grave, stern glare. “We need to figure 3 things: 1. How this virus came to exist. 2. How it infects. 3. How do we cure it.”

This will be the first time the group would work all together on a single case. The seriousness of the situation they’re facing against hits Wilbur all too suddenly — it seems almost surreal. And stupid. All his channelled focus he put on the River of Horrors case feels like a dumb waste of time, comparing it to what Schlatt n Co had been working on.

“But Wilbur,” Ty utters, “we aren’t doctors. How are we meant to find a cure for an apocalyptic virus?!”

“Wait, apocalyptic? So we live in some sort of dystopian fiction universe now?” Tommy’s realisation at this seems a little too enthusiastic given their current situation. “Sweet! Can I be the main protagonist?”

“This is no time to joke around, Tommy!!” Wilbur snaps at him, smacking the pen Tommy had been fidgeting for the past 5 minutes out his hands. “We’re all in serious danger! For all we know, Schlatt and Connor could be dead right now as we speak! I’m going to have to call Techno to come back and help—“

A ring from Ty’s phone cuts him short. He stops, and turns around as Ty pulls his slowly phone out from his pockets. He gasps.

“What?” Wilbur hisses, but when Ty shows him his screen, he’s also left speechless.

... It’s a video call notification, **from Schlatt’s phone.**


	4. PT4 - BREAKING

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a long chapter, sorry! ^^;;

**RIVER OF HORRORS  
** **PART 4**

**───── ❝ BREAKING ❞ ─────**

“Ho. Ly. Fuck.”

He stops himself, standing at the ledge of the shallow cliff. Schlatt’s eyes widen as he takes a good look at the surroundings of the Outside World; the mess of the world that is laid out beyond him.

“Woah,” Connor murmurs breathlessly, his hair gently blowing into his face by the breeze of the afternoon air. With slumped shoulders, he stands beside Schlatt. “It’s like… Hell, on Earth.”

Before the two boys, is a clear landscape of a small town, which was the closest place to them considering their home was an area secluded from reality. It was an hour walk through the forest, and there was a small transport Cable Car railway that led them to the closest town, which was about another 1 hour ride.  
And now, here they are, standing before a complete and utter dumpster fire; infrastructure of what used to be small towns and markets were nothing but collapsed ruins; the windshields of the last few cars on the street were smashed in, and their tires were torn out, rolling across the empty suburbs. Oh yeah, _ghost_ _empty_ _suburbs_. There is no sign of life anywhere in sight.

And there’s an incredulous amount of blood smeared all over the floor, and walls of the last remaining market stalls standing. And of course, garbage is littered all over the streets.

“It’s worse than your room.” Schlatt elicits with a facetious remark.

Mesmerised by the horrific view, Connor only murmurs a “yeah…”, before realising what he had said. “Wait… _Hey!”_

Schlatt folds his arms, examining the surroundings that are laid out. He’s had a hunch that the virus turned people into cannibals — especially after the conversation they all had with Ty before arriving here. But even so… It had not occurred to him that reality would look nearly as bad as _this._

Surely the entire world doesn’t look like this, _right?_ He comes to the wishful deduction that this place was most likely used as the main feeding grounds. Well, it was either that, or the entire world looked worse than this.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” Connor mulls over out loud. “It was only, what, yesterday? That we even discovered this virus, let alone what effect it had. Don’t tell me that all of… _this_ happened within the timespan of 24 hours!”

_Yeah, so much for the government keeping this a secret from the public._

Nodding, Schlatt’s lips curve with a fair amount of depreciation, before responding. “Well, we also have to acknowledge that our base is outcasted from society, so we might have been a little behind on things… Either that, or these cannibalistic people are hungry out of their fuckin’ minds.”

“It might be a bit of both.”

The two boys fall quiet for a moment, and as their alluding silence hang in the air, they both turn quickly to face each other, raising their hands as they comically exclaim in sync:

_“Last to find a human makes dinner for tonight!”_

And then they jump off the ledge, skidding down the slope and running into the disaster of a town.

When the two enter the vicinity of the town, before them the streets split up into 3 directions; left, right, and forward. Connor calls out to him, signalling that he’s taking left, and so naturally, Schlatt signals right. 

Thrusting his legs forward, Connor finds himself racing through the hollow streets of the town, leaping over clusters of rubbish and shattered glass scattered out on the pathway. Oblivious to the knowledge that he’s probably being a little _too_ exuberant given their current situation, he keeps a keen eye out for any signs of life. After all, he hates cooking dinner. He can’t really remember the last time he cooked an acceptable meal.  
Though even if he did end up losing the challenge, a fraction of him doubts that the others will even _let_ him cook. Considering the last time he did… he blew up the kitchen.

“Well at least I know you can’t put aluminium foil in the microwave, now,” Connor mutters to himself under his breath, with light panting intertwined between the words he formulates. 

As he mumbles, he slips over a piece of trash, skidding across the pavement until his face comes in contact with the first physical object in his path — in this case, that ‘physical object’ being a half-broken light post. His legs giving out below him, he half-yells and half-groans out, rubbing his forehead. Outlines of a light bruise already begins to form on him.

“Jesus… Motherfucking… _Christ that hurt!”_ he stumbles back up, muttering more curses before continuing his mission. Running through the endless town’s aisles, he turns left, then right, and then left again, straight forward… Until he has absolutely _no idea_ where he’s going.

Every time he’d turn a corner, whatever would lay before him on the pathway ahead would look almost identical to the last. Every single one of them, littered with trash and still suffused with the same lifelessness in the dead, heavy air. All the while his eyes never focused on the direct path ahead; instead, he’d be looking left and right, keeping a sharp eye out on his surroundings. There could be somebody — anybody — hiding beneath the shadows, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce onto an uninfected human and eat them alive.

For the first time, the mortifying realisation flitters across his consciousness, and he only just now recognises how terrifying their situation is. **And how vulnerable they are.  
**They hadn’t bought any weapons of any sort with them — in fact, it didn’t even come across their _mind_ that they’d need weapons.

Connor assumed that the virus only infected less than 1% of the population, considering the statistics. And kids had a higher death toll than adults, too. So he figured he was completely safe.  
But judging by the ghost town he’s found himself running along in, something tells him that if a cannibal were to show up, they’re not going to be too picky on what age their victim is.

He swallows, compunctious feelings of apprehension arising in the depths of his timid-tangled stomach. He slows down. _Oh god. They could show up anywhere, at any second. They’re going to eat me alive. Those monsters won’t waste a second if it means I’ll get away with it. I’m fucked._

Escaping the alleyway, he runs out into the middle of a 4-way street.

 **_We’re_ ** _fucked! We’re right out in the middle of the open on its feeding grounds! We’re—_

He’s cut short of his internal monologue as he crashes into something again — no, some _one._ To his relief, it’s just Schlatt. Turns out they both ended up meeting back again.

“Jesus fuck Connor! You might be taller than me but it’s not like you’re completely fucking blind from 5’4 and lower!”

Still somehow standing, Connor looks down and sees Schlatt on the ground, rubbing his just below his left shoulder. 

“Ah, s—sorry, Schlatt!” Connor stutters, bending down and offering him a hand. “Are you okay?”

“Now my arm hurts _even more,”_ he grumbles, the corners of his lips twitching as his eyebrows furrow, “thanks a lot, fuckwit.”

Connor retaliates back, helpless surprise colouring his face at the man’s snappy comeback.  
‘Arm hurts even _more.’_ When Connor thinks about it, it’s quite funny…

**… Because _his_ arm actually hurts, too.**

Yeah, the memory is still vivid clear in his mind. Just this morning, Connor had woken up with an incredibly sore arm. He didn’t bother questioning it or anything, since he thought he might have just slept on the wrong side of his bed. But when Schlatt had crashed into him a few seconds ago, he doesn’t remember ever feeling his left arm hitting him. 

Could this mean Schlatt also woke up with the same sore arm, too?  Suddenly, a horrific thought flashes in his mind, and he starts to panic.

_Oh god, is this a symptom of the virus?! It is, isn’t it?! We’re both infected and we never knew it!_

“Schlatt!” he exclaims, grabbing the man’s right hand as he yanks him up on his two feet. “There’s— There’s something I need to tell you!”

 _We have to go back home_ **_right now._ ** _We can’t stay here any longer. Infected or not, we’re still human beings, and we’re unarmed. If one of them were to come at us…_

That’s what he wants to tell him, anyway. But he can’t, because Schlatt stops him from continuing any further.

“No, no, no!” he spits, jabbing a finger into his chest. “First, you injure me without even apologising, and now you want to have the first say _expecting_ me to listen? What are you, the president? Let _me_ fucking speak first, Connor!”

Schlatt takes a step back, dusting off his coat. He glances around him, before turning to Connor. For a few moments, a cautious silence rests on the cold palm of anticipation, before Schlatt opens his mouth to speak.

“I thought of a fantastic idea while I was running,” he starts, “and as I ran, I thought: How am I going to be able to describe this mess of a town we’re in to the others? There’s no way I can put the disaster of our surroundings into proper words. So _then,_ I thought: Hey, what if instead of telling the others… We _show them._ So…!”

He digs a hand into the pocket of his coat, quickly pulling out his phone as a complacent smirk curls along his face.

“We’re gonna video call them, Connor. And you’re gonna be the camera man!”

He hands his phone to Connor, who hesitantly takes it. Struggling to quiet the fevered fear in the sinews of his heart, he says, “look, Schlatt. I don’t think—“

“Shut up!” he snaps back, taking a few set of steps back, trying to find a good position that both shows the mess of the environment and his pose. “ _I’m_ the dictator here, bitch! Now hold my phone and make sure the camera’s facing me!”

“I never agreed to this.“ Connor mutters while he’s tapping the screen to open up face-time.

“Yes you did.”

A few long seconds pass.

“Oh my god,” Schlatt speaks. “Hurry up, how long does it take to call someone?”

Frustrated by his arrogance, Connor snaps as he yells back: “I’m _trying!_ Just be patient!”

He presses the CALL button, and a ‘contacting…’ symbol appears on the smartphone screen. 

“Don’t yell back at your superior!” Schlatt suddenly shouts, his nose wrinkling as if he’s just laid eyes upon the most disgraceful thing in the universe. “It’s not my fault you apparently never used a fucking phone before!”

Sick of his condescending attitude, Connor doesn’t hold back as he bounces the argument back at him. “Well it’s not _my fault_ that your in-debt fucking ass owns a shitty _iPhone 5!_ Seriously, I had to re-open the god damned app three times because it kept freezing!”

“It’s an iPhone 4, moron!”

_“You’re just proving my point!!”_

Schlatt purses his lips, pausing. Did he give up on the argument? Connor’s shoulders slump, relief flooding him.  
Until he opens his mouth again, and murmurs cholericly.

“… You want to know my point _you_ just proved? Just now?”

An indignant frown curls down on Connor’s face. “What? What is it?”

“… You’re a fucking idiot.”

_“What did I even do?!”_

“Nothing! Which is exactly why you’re an idiot!”

“How does that make—!“

“Uh, hello?”

The two boys mouths instantaneously zip shut, their gazes both meeting each others as they do so. That last voice came from neither of them, but it was undoubtedly familiar. Connor looks at the phone in his hand.  
On the screen are three boys crowded close together — Ty, Wilbur, and Tommy. The deep british voice came from Wilbur, who was staring intently at the screen with a mildly confused look.

“Are you guys… Okay there?” Wilbur asks through the call again. Oh crap, they must have overheard their argument. Wait, how long were they listening in for…?

Quickly, Connor faces the camera towards Schlatt, mouthing the words ‘THEY PICKED UP’. Schlatt blinks, and takes a sheepish step back.

“Whatever you guys heard before, pretend that never happened.” he brashly starts, clearing his throat before stepping back again to make a pose. “Good afternoon, gentlemen, and Tommy. You’re probably wondering why I called you at a time like this. Well me and Connor are in the Outside World now, and holy _fuck!_ Allow me to show you all this dump that was bestowed upon us!”

He waves his hands to his right, as if presenting something dramatically monumental. Nodding his head to his side, he gestures Connor to pan the camera. But he doesn’t.

“Um…” Connor whispers, with a tone loud enough for Schlatt to hear. “How do I zoom out of your face?”

Schlatt frowns. “What? Why are you zoomed into my—? Nevermind. Just press that button in the corner.”

Still struggling to operate the basic mechanic, a few seconds drag by before Connor stammers again. “There’s no button, Schlatt.”

“Yes there— okay just give me that! Christ you really don’t know how to use a phone!” Irritated, Schlatt runs to Connor, trying to snatch the phone from his hand. Despite Connor being significantly taller, he manages to somehow stumble back and fall as Schlatt tries to rip the phone from his hand.

Somehow still holding the phone, Connor yelps: “Schlatt! Stop, you’re going to break it—!”

They exchange arguments as they both fight over the phone, and it only just occurs to Connor how chaotic things must look from Wilbur’s end on the line. What’s worse is that Wilbur’s probably saying something to make them shut up, but they can’t even hear any of it over the yells of each other. Eventually, Schlatt does grab the phone out of Connor’s grasp, but it ends up slipping from his hands and dropping to the concrete floor.

“Now look what you’ve done!” Schlatt snaps, “you dropped my fucking phone!”

“I didn’t drop it!”

“Yes you did!!”

Connor rushes to pick it up, the camera unknowingly facing his face as he does so. 

“Sorry guys, uh, let me just um… Is this how you flip the camera?”As he mumbles this (mainly to himself) while carefully picking up the (thankfully, not broken) phone, he swears he can hear Tommy comment something like “POV, Connor doesn’t know how to hold a phone like a normal human.”

He stands up, and gives the phone to Schlatt, who tears it out his hand with contemptuous force. “Okay, since _somebody_ here doesn’t know how to operate a basic phone, _I’ll_ hold this. OK, so where was I?”

“I think you were trying to show us where you are.” Ty quickly remarks through the screen.

“Oh yeah,” Schlatt mulls aloud, flipping the camera view around so that it’s facing the disastrous townscape. “So we came to the outside world, and saw this. Yeah, this place is a mess, right?”

Gasps ripple throughout the trio of boys, before awe-struck murmurs of commotion linger between them afterwords. Schlatt continues to pan the camera around the deserted area.

“Jesus Christ…” he hears Wilbur murmur. “That’s a lot worse than I thought…”

“Is the entire world like that…?” Ty mumbles, too. Suddenly, someone gasps.

“Holy shit, Schlatt!”

That was Tommy. Raising an eyebrow at the unprompted exclamation, all Schlatt does is utter a “what?”

“Is that motorbike yours?!”

Motorbike? The question strikes him out of the blue, leaving him at a loss for words. Narrowing his eyes, he glares at the direction Tommy had noticed the vehicle at. “What do you mean motor…—“

His voice trails off as his eyes come in contact with it — Yes, that’s it. Over there, in the far distance parked beside a lamp-post is a motorbike. He swears he never saw that there before. Did it just come now? Or has it always been there?

“You never told us you guys had a motorbike!” Ty exclaims.

“I never… I don’t think…” Schlatt’s words fumble and catch in his throat. “That… **That was never there before…”**

The more he stares at the vehicle, the more certain he is of it’s presence just existing now. Yeah, he’s right. That motorbike was definitely not there before.  
With a slightly anxious expression laid out on his face, he slowly turns his head to face Connor. But what he sees surprises him.

Connor is frozen still; his vacant eyes seems to simply hover in an empty space behind Schlatt. His shoulders quiver ever so lightly, and visible, shimmering beads of sweat are visible on his forehead.

“Sch—Sch—Schla—aatt…” His inarticulate voice trembles violently in his throat, apprehension seizing his every word. “W-W-What’s… that t—thing… b—b—behind y—you…?”

_What?_

He cautiously cranes his neck back, half-expecting Connor to just be experiencing some hyper delusional scenario to try scare him. But when he turns around, all doubts of that vanish within the blink of an eye.

Because right behind Schlatt, standing about 20 meters away beside a tipped-over trash can, is a tall man with human blood smeared all over his face and hands.

** * * * * **

  
He looks to be in his late 30s, maybe even his early 40s — it’s hard to tell, considering the distance shared between him and the man. But there’s no doubt about it alright. He’s one of _them._

Almost spontaneously, as if making mere eye contact had activated something in his brain, rewiring his senses, the man breaks into a fierce sprint. Schlatt feels his heart drop into his stomach, infused with a flush of fearsome knotted pain — as if it’s arteries had managed to tangle itself within his guts. 

Shuddering with trepidation, Schlatt screams, jumping and clinging onto Connor, who also does the same. Hugging each other tight, they both shriek in terror.

“ _AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”_

Schlatt suddenly stops screaming.

“Wait,” he facetiously remarks, “I’m not cooking dinner, right?”

“WE’RE NOT GOING TO GET DINNER IF WE DON’T RUN!” Connor shrieks, yanking his wrist with a steel grip as he starts to make a run for it. “ _SO FUCKING RUUUUN!!”_

For the first time today, Schlatt actually listens to Connor, obliging as he quickly breaks into a dragging sprint behind him. Inevitably, the tall man chases them. If Schlatt didn’t know it before, definitely knows it now — the guy’s for sure one of those man-murdering cannibals.  
They run down the street, cutting corners at an abandoned alleyway with a truckload of scattered junk all over the concrete paving. Seriously, the entire alleyway is like some sort of dumpster. You could find anything in there if you tried.

“W-What’s going on over there?!” comes Wilbur’s voice, mildly static and slightly cutting out from the phone. Schlatt only just realises that he’s still clutching the phone in one of his hands. The camera must have been shaking so bad the others couldn’t tell what was going on.

“Schlatt?” Wilbur’s voice barely makes it through the crappy reception. “—Connor? Are you guys alright—?!”

“DOES IT SOUND LIKE WE’RE ALRIGHT?” Schlatt snaps between heavy pants as he sprints down the street.

“WE’RE TOTALLY NOT ALRIGHT!” comes his friends response.

Schlatt can hear the man draw closer from behind; his footsteps are frantic, and completely out of place. Gurgled, enigmatic noises are the only sounds coming from his mouth. He doesn’t want to turn around.  
To his fear, his grip on his phone slips quickly, and it falls right out his hand. It smashes onto the concrete floor, it’s technical bits and pieces exploding out of his smartphones shell. 

_“My phone!!”_ he cries out, resisting the urge to collect it’s remains and try to fix it. As if Connor read his mind, he grabs his wrist and yanks him again to remind him that they’re being chased by a cannibalistic psychopath.

 _“Your own fault for not being patient enough to let me use it!!”_ Connor yells over the wind smashing into their faces and their fevered, running footsteps.

_“Shut the fuck up Connor! Otherwise, I’m going to fucking throw you into that psycho bitch’s mouth!”_

The demonised, human-slaughtering monster responds with a loud, inhumane gargled shriek, as if agreeing with Schlatt’s insult. To the boys horror, the man’s running pace begins to pick up.

Nearing the end of the alleyway, Schlatt leaps onto a rusty metal tray that happens to by lying on the trash-filled ground, and uses it as if it’s some sort of snowboard, skidding across the concrete floor. He jumps off it once he reaches the corner.

Connor swiftly bends down and grabs a broken window pane on the floor as he runs, and ditches it behind him with a battle cry. It comes in contact with the mans forehead, colliding into his skull with the force of a brick.  
Just as he does so, the two turn another corner, which leads them out onto another less-trashed street. Wait a second — there’s that motorbike again, in the distance. Did they seriously just run around in a circle, ending up back where they confronted the man?

“Schlatt, I think we lost him!” Connor pants, doubling-over with his hands pressed on his knees as he stops. Schlatt’s feet also scuff to a stop.

“I hit him hard on the head,” Connor continues, “and there’s no way he could have survived that. I think we got him.”

“Oh thank God,” Schlatt exhales with relief, wiping his forehead with his sleeve as he catches his breath. A few beats of reassuring silence pass, excluding the sounds of their panting. When to their sheer dismay, the translucent gauze obscuring the reality of events behind consolation abruptly disappears, as the man jumps out from the corner of the alleyway they just came out from.

His entire face is enveloped in crimson, pouring blood; the probable source of his bloodshed being the thick shard of glass half-buried in his forehead. A wicked, deranged smile curls along the man’s face as his teeth drip with droplets of flesh.

Gasping, Schlatt takes a step back. _Impossible._

It almost fascinates him, how he’s still functioning with a half-torn brain. It’s almost as if he’s some sort of immortal zombie. That must mean the virus doesn’t only alter the digestive system — but it also alters the **entire brain’s nervous system.**

“ _Eaaaaaat.”_ the man gargles, taking a lumbering step closer to the two fragile boys. His hollow voice chokes, as he splutters out clumps of blood. _“Eat… I m..ust… Human… Humans… Flesh… Eat.”_  
****

“No…” Connor shakes his head, gaze locked in with the monster as he takes a fearful step back. “No, no, no!! Please! No I can’t die now!”  
He turns around, and runs, screaming at the top his lungs. “I’M TOO YOUNG TO DIE! NOT COOKING DINNER ISN’T WORTH THE PRICE OF MY YOUTHFUL LIFE!!”

Like the idiot he is, he trips over his own foot almost immediately after. 

“CONNOR, I’M SORRY!” Schlatt yells, running past the his fallen friend. “BUT YOU’RE GOING TO BE THE SACRIFICE! I’M WORTH $5.4 MILLION AND AM FINANCIALLY BETTER THAN YOU IN EVERY WAY! Connor, it’s for the greater good! _I’m too valuable to die!!”_

He halts his running facade, and frantically points to Connor, whose lying on the ground. With his other hand, he waves at the cannibal, whose taking slow, deranged steps towards the boys. 

“HEY! You fucking weirdo!” Schlatt yells. “Go eat him instead! Not me! He’s a lot more healthier than I am! I bet his flesh tastes better!”

_"WHAT?!_ No! Don’t listen to him!! Schlatt, what the _fuck_ are you saying?!”

The cannibal tilts his head, as if deciding on what offer to take — the boy on the ground, or the one still standing a few meters away from that boy on the ground. A few anxious seconds pass.

. . . And then he chooses to run after Schlatt.

“Wait, no!” he utters, as the man pounces on top of him like a prying lion. “DON’T GO AFTER ME! AHHHH!!”

Before he knows it, he’s wresting a 40-year-old cannibalistic human whose trying to (probably) eat his brain. For the first time, he’s able to grasp a clear, visible view of the man’s face close up.  
His speckled, bloodshot pupils vibrate and shake behind his cornea, as a fleeting, crazed sensation flickers relentlessly in his frenzied eyes. He can feel his breath — putrid and foul — right against him, scattering his thoughts in all directions.

Both hands gripping his clothed shoulders, he struggles under the weight of the older man as he uses all the force he has to try push him off. Grunting and yelling, he kicks and thrashes about. But his attempts are in vain, as each time he pushes against the dead weight, he’s only met with a stronger, overpowering force of resilience, laced with the man’s ever-growing crave for his flesh. It’s as if the more he moves, the stronger the cannibal gets.

Until in the corner of Schlatt’s eye, he can see something shimmer, and dangle in the man’s pocket of his ripped jeans. His gaze darts to the object, and realises it’s a key.

_A key._

The image of the motorbike in the distance flashes idly in his head. 

_That’s where it came from!_

He’s hit with a wave of obvious realisation.

The motorbike must belong to the man — that’s how it got there. He must have travelled here to find food. _It is a feeding ground after all._

_“Connor!!”_ he splutters, shrieking out.

As he thrashes, he cranes his head around, and sees Connor staggering to his feet. The entire left side of his face is scraped with dribbling blood. That probably explains what took him so long to stand up. He must have had a pretty bad fall.

Channelling as much energy he has to his legs, he ferociously kicks the monster in the crotch. His concentration slips, and Schlatt uses his brief distraction as the opportunity to steal his keys. He stretches out his arm, and manages to just barely snatch the keys from his pocket.

“Connor!” he reiterates again, shouting louder than before. Grabbing Connor’s attention, he ditches the keys at him. “ _Get the motorbike!!”_

Abruptly, the man’s hand suddenly shoots down to his neck, his fingers coiling tightly around it. His thumb presses down on his pulse below his carotid artery as he does so, creating a blockage for oxygen in his throat.  
As if its mouth is a working water generator, ongoing pools of frothing foam and sticky saliva drools from the cannibal’s lower lip, dripping onto Schlatt’s face. He gags at the pungent smell and icky feeling. Screwing his eyes shut, he fights for air as the vacant space between his ribcage starts to slowly drain of oxygen.

He brings his arm up, punching the monster in the cheek. He grabs the large shard of glass stabbed into the side of his head, and digs it further into his skull until he hears a gruesome crack. More blood spills from his head, and the man’s grip around his neck slips. Schlatt gasps immediately after, using this as a chance to suck in as much air as he can.

But to his terror, the man’s faltering only lasted for a few quick seconds. He then latches his hand onto his neck again, clawing at it. He shrieks out in agony, feeling the surface layers of his skin scrape off as the man’s fingernails dig into and tear it like fabric. He lashes out more, as an impulse of raw fire surges through his throat.

What once used to be a throbbing pain turns quickly into spasming torture; feeling like his entire neck is on fire, he screams out.  
He then hears a motorbike rev in the distance, and a small part of him feels relief knowing that his theory about the keys and motorbike was correct. Connor’s on the bike.

Using the last ounce of the strength he has left in him, he cries out, kicking the monster off of him with a substantial force. To his surprise, it works, and the man falls to his right. Just as he does so, the front of the motorbike rams into the body, running it over. 

His heart pounding out of his chest, Schlatt crawls back in a hurry. If he was just a little closer, he would have been hit by the bike, too.

“Get on!” Connor yells, stopping the motorbike as he offers a hand out to Schlatt, whose on his knees. “He might still be alive!”

With immense gratitude, Schlatt takes his hand, and Connor pulls him up on the vehicle behind him. He wraps his arms around Connor’s waist as the boy revs the vehicle again, accelerating down the street.  
A few minutes pass of Schlatt catching his breath, before he speaks. “Took you long enough.”

“Sorry. I couldn’t see for a solid minute.”

Schlatt closes his eyes, resting his head against Connor’s back. His entire chest is warm and damp, and if he focuses hard enough, he can still feel the hot liquid stream down his neck. He feels like he’s just been injected with a bucket full of adrenaline. It’s coursing through his veins like a wildfire.

“You’re a fucking mess, Connor.” Schlatt mutters. His cruel observation is followed quickly by a spasm of choking coughs. He dreads the moment when his numbness will wear off.

“You’re one to talk,” Connor responds, quickly sneaking a glance behind. “… You look really bad, Schlatt. Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m not. I just got my throat clawed out.” Despite the sarcasm, his reply lacks the life of his usual contemptuous, ridiculing attitude.

Connor falls silent. A few seconds pass, before he softly whispers. “I’m so sorry, Schlatt.”

The two don’t speak again for the rest of the ride back.

** * * * * **

  
  


Sheer shock with a mixture of horror colours Tommy and Ty’s ashen faces as they open the door. Standing before them is Schlatt and Connor, drenched in sweat and blood. 

There’s a giant graze covering an entire half of Connor’s face, smeared with dried up blood. There’s also a massive bruise on his forehead, and a thin, dry trickle of blood is stained from underneath his nostrils to his upper lip.

Schlatt on the other hand, looks a lot worse. Barely just able to stand, he has an arm around Connor’s shoulder for support. His eyes are a bloodshot red, and his entire neck is caked in blood. Thin flaps of his skin peel from his neck like tattered wallpaper; his entire chest is damp with blood, and his hands are a soaking red. The two look like they’re murderers who just came out of a crime scene.

“Oh my god, holy shit!!” Tommy yells out, stifling back a scream with his hand. “Schlatt! Connor! Holy shit, holy shit, are you guys okay?!”

Ty retaliates back, mortification written in bold across his face as he screams. Tears prickling the corners of his eyes, he stammers out. “Oh god! I—I’ll go get the m—med kit— oh my fucking God!!”

He jolts around and runs to the medic room, which was downstairs. Wilbur, who heard Ty’s shriek from the other side of the base, sprints down the hallway before halting to a stop as he sees the bloodied messes of Schlatt and Connor walk through the door. Freezing in his tracks, his gaze fixates onto the ram man’s.  
The man stares back at him, his tired eyelids drooping over half of his glassy eyes. There’s a flash of emptiness in his hollow pupils.

An inarticulate expression falls upon Wilbur — his glazed-over eyes bulging out of his sockets, baffled at the sight of the boys condition. His breath hitching, a delicate, intermittent movement twitches on one half of his face. He takes a slow step forward, and another step, and then he breaks into another sprint toward Schlatt. Raising his hand, he smacks him hard across the face.

“ _What the fuck is wrong with you?!”_ he shrieks in his face, saliva spraying out his mouth like a fountain. “Going out there completely unarmed with absolutely _no idea of the danger you were facing against?!”_

Still holding onto Connor, Schlatt stumbles back at the hit. He brings a frail hand to his cheek, rubbing it to ease the pain. He doesn’t say anything.

Gaping, Connor exclaims, _“Wilbur—!”_

_“There are ravenous, cannibalistic monsters roaming around out there!_ And you waste your fucking time _mucking around like little children and playing with your fucking phone_ instead of being careful! Because of your childish behaviour you two almost got fucking _killed!!”_

He leans closer into Schlatt’s face, making sure the man hears every single word coming out his mouth clearer than day. For the shit he pulled on him today, he’s not going to let him go the rest of the night without giving him the fucking earful he deserves.  
Ever since the face-call cut out on him earlier today, Wilbur’s insides had been gnawing at him relentlessly — the rising anxiety of the very likely possibility Schlatt and Connor won’t return home building up in him. He was terrified for their life. While they might have returned, they sure as hell didn’t come back in one piece.

“What the _fuck_ was going through your head when you pulled out your phone and started face timing us while being chased by cannibals?! Huh? What, you thought you were being fucking funny? Well you weren’t, you fucking—!”

A pair of arms swoop under Wilbur’s arms, yanking him back.

“Wilbur, stop!” Tommy yells. Turns out those arms belong to the 6’1 british child.

“Don’t tell _me_ when to fucking stop, Tommy!” he snaps back at Tommy, his condenscending voice lowering to an agitated grumble.

“Look at yourself!” he cries out at him, pulling him back further. “You’re the one acting like a kid, Wilbur! Can’t you see that neither of them are in the right mindset for this sort of thing! Schlatt probably doesn’t even understand half of what you’re saying right now! Give them a break. Save your lecturing for tomorrow when they’ve recovered.”

He stops, and the realisation hits him like a brick. _Tommy’s acting more of an adult than_ ** _I_** _am._

His gaze trails over to the two boys — Connor, whose still carrying Schlatt over his arm, has his forehead being patched up by Ty, who seemed to have returned with his med kit at some point during Wilbur’s scolding. Schlatt’s staring off into a void, as if experiencing a touch of disconnection from reality.  
  
When Ty finishes up patching Connor, he scuffs over to Schlatt. “I’ll go try fix him up in the med room.”  
  
Nodding at Connor for support, he lifts Schlatt’s other arm over Ty’s shoulder. Just as they are about to walk off to the med room, Wilbur’s alert eyes meet Connor’s, and he speaks with a calmer tone of voice:

“Don’t think you’re in the clear for this too, Connor.”

Connor doesn’t say anything; he just nods. Wilbur’s lips curve with disappointment.

“From now on, neither of you or Schlatt will ever be going on any missions together.”

To his surprise, all three of the boys — Ty, Tommy, and Connor — all exclaim out. “ _What?!”_

_So_ ** _now_** _they talk, huh?_ “I can’t afford risking you two getting yourselves killed by your immaturity. So from now on, you two won’t be working together outside of the base. Got that?”

Connor falls silent, before he eventually quietly mumbles a, “yes”. 

Wilbur huffs. “Good… Now go and fix up Schlatt. Tommy, you should probably get some rest, too.”

  
  


** * * * * **

It’s 3:02 AM, and no matter what he tries to do, Wilbur can’t seem to close his eyes for more than 10 seconds without them snapping open again. It’s on nights like these where he wishes insomnia wouldn’t hit him like a fucking boulder.

He gets up from his bed, looking around the room. It’s ghost empty.

Inside their small base, there were 2 bedrooms — each with 3 beds. In the Room A were Tommy, Ty, and Technoblade — not that Techno was home that often, anyway. And in Room B was Connor, Schlatt, and Wilbur.  
Tonight however, it looks like Connor must have slept in another room. Wilbur takes a rough guess that he probably passed out in the research laboratory again. As for Schlatt — he has an idea of where he might be.

He pulls his covers off of him, rubbing his eyes with heavy arms as he gets up out of bed. He drags his feet over to the door, creaking it open; he exits the room, wandering down the hallway to the back door. With a gentle hand, he twists the doorknob, and pushes it open. 

A cold gust of midwinter wind smacks him hard in the face. He flinches, before closing the door quietly behind him. Burying his hands in his pockets, he walks outside onto the back porch.  
There, a few meters away from him, is a curled up man sitting on a wooden chair, gazing off into the distance. 

“I knew you’d be here.” A soft, relieved smile curls along Wilbur’s face. It looks like Schlatt’s regained a lot of consciousness since earlier.

Without turning to look at him, Schlatt mutters with a dragging delay. “You’ve cooled down now?

His voice is frail, and delicate — like a leaf. If his words were a physical object, they would shatter at the slightest of touch. But hearing Schlatt sound like this — so _vulnerable —_ it’s quite unusual. And completely out of character.

“… Yeah, I have.”

Guilt eating him up amidst the depths of his tangled gut, Wilbur exhales deeply. His feet glide over to the chair a few feet beside Schlatt, and he plops down to take a seat. There’s a reason he wanted to see him.

“Look… Schlatt…” he starts, staring off into the distance to avoid eye contact. At night, the view of the valleys before them seem like endless canopies of forests and trees. With the full moon out tonight, it’s leaves glimmer with a light almost like a crystal underneath the tranquil moonlight.

“I’m… _Really sorry,_ about earlier.” His eyes fall down to his feet as the burden of regret over his shoulders slowly slips off. “I shouldn’t have acted like that. Tommy was right, for the first time _I_ was the one acting like a child. I didn’t even consider how you would have felt because I only cared about my own feelings… So I’m sorry.”

He screws his eyes shut, sheltering his thoughts from being carried away by the chilling breeze. Wilbur purses his lips; struggling to quiet the fevered ache in the sinews of his heart, he whispers, “I was just… scared. _That I lost you.”_

There’s a few seconds of silence. And then, Schlatt opens his mouth, and speaks with a voice ever so fragile: “I was scared that I lost myself, too.”

Wilbur’s eyes open, and he finds himself fixating his sight onto Schlatt, whose stare into the distance is unwavering. He swear he can see liquid sting his glassy eyes.

“I can still remember the way that thing looked when it attacked me, Wil.” Schlatt shudders as he murmurs, except this time Wilbur has a feeling it’s not because it’s cold out. Still, that glazed-over expression had never left his eyes as he spoke. “It had this wild, crazed look in his it’s eyes. **Like it wasn’t human**. I mean, physically, it was human. But mentally, it was something of a completely different species.”

_Like it wasn’t human._

The vivid image of his nightmare flashes in Wilbur’s head.

_‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Surely you can't be human!’_

_‘Oh but I am._ **_I am just as human as you, Wilbur.’_ **

But there was nothing human about what he had seen in Schlatt in that reflection. His gut tangles, as if foreboding something he dreads of anticipating.

“Every time I close my eyes,” Schlatt goes on, his voice flat, “it’s like… I can still feel it’s nails, bury deep into my skin.”

“Schlatt…—“ Wilbur starts, but he ignores him.

“And I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Thinking about what would happen to me if it infected me, too. Would I be like that? **Would I lose my mind like that thing?”**

His heart pounds in his ribcage as his mind flashes with more memories.

_You're sick. I don't know who you are, or what you're trying to get out of this, but you have to stop. You have to stop what you're doing right now, you sick son of a bitch.’_

_…_

_’You can’t escape me. You will never,_ **_ever_ ** _escape me!!’_

“Schlatt, calm down.” Even though he’s talking to Schlatt, it’s almost as if he’s trying to convince _himself_ the same thing. “You’re… You’re not—“

“Calm down?” Schlatt jerks over to face him, and for the first time tonight, his eyes meet with Wilbur’s. His dull, chafed chocolate eyes linger with an almost _sad_ presence behind them. “How can you expect me to be calm when there’s the almost _certain_ possibility that I’ll become like _them? You don’t understand, Wilbur._ Those things weren’t human… Nothing about them was human. I don’t want to lose myself to that virus. _I don’t want to turn into those.. Those man-eating zombies.”_

His voice trembles as he speaks, and Wilbur notices how tightly Schlatt is gripping the armrests of the chair. He’s truly terrified for his life. And it breaks him.

Because as much as Wilbur hates to say it, deep down, he knows the _truth._ What he had seen in the river — it feels more than just a nightmare, now. It feels like a _sign._ Like as if the vision he had seen was foreboding the dark future of what’s to come.

Deep down in his gut, he knows very well of the chances Schlatt has of manifesting into one of them. While it's true that the river was a just a nightmare, he can't help but not ignore the feeling in his gut screaming at him that Schlatt is in danger.

He wishes he never looked into reflection. He wishes that they never even _discovered_ the river to begin with. He wishes all of his memories of that day were erased completely from his head.  
If he had just never looked into the water, he wouldn't be breaking as much as he is now. He would be able to lie to his face, _without even knowing it._

_I can’t tell him the truth of what I saw in that river. There’s no way I can. It’ll hurt him. It’ll hurt him so,_ **_so_ ** _badly._

Subconsciously, Wilbur cups his hand in Schlatt’s.  Sniffing, Schlatt chokes on his tears. “ _I’m scared, Wil. I’m scared that someday I’m going to wake up and I won’t even be able to recognise who I am._ ”

He can feel his hand shake in his; with his free hand, Schlatt clasps it around his mouth to stifle back a sob. 

“Will I…” he starts, eyes leaking of tears as he stammers through wretched sobs. “… _Will I ever become like them, Wilbur? Am I going to become like those monsters someday?”_

_I can’t tell him what I saw. I can’t tell him anything. I can’t do it._

The tugging at the strings of his heart turn quickly into harsh pulls. Wilbur lets go of Schlatt’s hand, clutching onto his chest to try ease the aching pain in his chest. He _knows_ that lying to Schlatt will end up hurting him even more in the end.

But does he have a choice? It's either mask the painful truth with a reassuring, comforting facade, or break his heart entirely.  
... So ignoring the burning pain in his ribcage, Wilbur lies upfront to Schlatt for the first time. 

“… No.”

_My heart hurts._

He closes his eyes. “You won’t turn into them. You won’t **ever** turn into them.”

_It feels like it’s being torn apart._

“Because… Because… _I won’t let that happen.”_

_I’m breaking._

He swallows hard. “Schlatt…”

_Stop lying to him. Stop lying to **yourself**._

**“… You’ll be okay.”**

_Stop._

Without thinking, Wilbur pulls him into an embrace, his body growing cold as he feels Schlatt bury his head in his shoulders. He can feel him crying, yet the sounds around him begin fade slowly, as if he’s falling closer and closer to eternal oblivion.

Until he hears nothing — feeling as if he’s deep underwater, a strong, forceful pressure blocking his eardrums. A taunting realisation dawns over him as he cradles Schlatt in his arms.

_How can I stop myself from breaking him if I end up breaking myself first?_


	5. PT5 - CONNECTION

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY ON . . .
> 
> \- “Woah,” Connor murmurs breathlessly. With slumped shoulders, he stands beside Schlatt. “It’s like… Hell, on Earth.”  
> \- Standing about 20 meters away beside a tipped-over trash can, is a tall man with human blood smeared all over his face and hands.  
> \- A few seconds pass, before he softly whispers. “I’m so sorry, Schlatt.”  
> \- "... You'll be ok"  
> \- /'How can I stop myself from breaking him if I end up breaking myself first?'/

**RIVER OF HORRORS**

**PART 5**

**───── ❝ CONNECTION ❞ ─────**

****

"Did you seriously have to wake us all up at 6:00AM for this?"

The whining came from Tommy, as expected.

"For once, I actually agree with him," Schlatt mutters wearily, his words slurring with morning fatigue. "Why do we all have to be awake at this time?"

"Because statistically, they say your brain works the sharpest early in the morning," Wilbur pokes a finger to the side of his head, as if physically gesturing would make his point clearer. In contrast to the rest of the boys, he was as awake as an owl. "And besides, I would like to get this over and done with as soon as possible."

But that's actually just an excuse to hide Wilbur's terrible sleep schedule and insomnia, which had been recurring frequently as of lately. Wilbur had kept vigil in his bed for the past few days, getting only an hour of sleep at most. Even when he would sleep, he'd wake up at a completely random time — sometimes 4, sometimes 6; whatever time it would be, it all resulted into one common outcome: it was impossible to go back to sleep after.

And so, today was one of the days he had found himself waking up early — 5:10AM, to be exact. He knew there was no way he could go back to sleep, so he got up and made himself poached eggs and toast for an early breakfast. During this period, he'd been in deep thought, mulling over the recent events.

Mid-way through taking a sip of his tea, he suddenly recalled a memory:  
  


_The River of Horrors. . .  
when I went to the river with Tommy, I collected a sample of the water in a container.  
  
_

Of course, the sample! He still needed to show Connor and Ty their nightmares. Before when he collected it, he just wanted to know out of curiosity.

But now...

_'Will I lose my mind like that thing?'  
  
_

The night he had spoken with Wilbur; the conversation they had still lingered distinctly in the back of his mind.

No, now he doesn't just want to know their visions; he needs to know. If what Wilbur saw really was a foreboding apprehension of a possible future... then that must mean the other's nightmares will have a similar connection, right?  
  


_'Ty. . .'_

_**'There's no way... he would have survived that...'**_

He recollects Tommy's vision, too. Did it also have to do with what Wilbur had seen? After submerging himself deep in his internal spiral of queries, he finished the last of his tea. He sat up from the table and decided he couldn't wait any longer. He was going to get his answer now.

Hence, what had led him up to present time — at exactly 6:02AM, Wilbur stands behind the desk in the Specimens Laboratory with his hands cupped around the glass jar of water. In front of him are the other four boys, all wearing the same tiresome expressions on their faces.

"Wilbur," Tommy asks him, mildly puzzled, "didn't you tell us that we were going to abandon the 'River of Horrors' mission and focus on the virus?"

"I said we were going to put it on hold, not abandon it," he replies back, sounding a bit more irritated than what he intended. "This is something really important. I have a strong gut feeling that all of our nightmares might be linked in one way or another... Which is why I need you two—"

He points at both Ty and Connor.

" — to watch your vision, and describe to me exactly what you saw, without leaving out any details. In fact, we'll all share what we saw, to make things fair."

Of course, he isn't _really_ going to tell them what he truly saw — at least, not now. Wilbur thought this through earlier, and decided he'd tell them most of what he saw, except leave out Schlatt and the... well, I'm sure you can guess what other part he's alluding to.

Nodding at Connor, Wilbur taps on the glass, "you'll go first, then Ty."

Connor, still in his pyjamas and probably half-asleep, nods sheepishly as he walks over to the desk with the glass jar. He unscrews the lid, and stares into the water. Both Tommy and Ty incline over to Connor, watching his reaction closely.  
Wilbur, who's pathway in front of Connor is obscured by the desk between them, also watches. 

But his eyes end up wandering over to Schlatt, who is standing a bit further behind Connor, zoned out with his hands shoved into his pockets.

 _Maybe he's still tired,_ Wilbur thinks.

He quickly shakes his head, allowing his gaze to fixate back onto Connor. Thinking of Schlatt will only serve as a hindrance to his current task.

Similar to what Wilbur had seen in Tommy at the start, Connor's expression remains vacant, as his eyes hover soullessly into the depths of the water. His expression abides intuitively standstill; until all of a sudden, an incoherent emotion washes his senses. He furrows his eyebrows, displaying an odd facial expression; Wilbur can't depict what it is at first, until a few seconds later — pain. _He looks like he's in pain._

Unlike Tommy, who had been terrified, Connor's faced with a much **different** reaction. With a creased forehead, and gritted teeth, he looks to be experiencing some sort of psychological pain. The seconds drag on and on, until out of nowhere, the abstract pain subsides, replaced with a frantically yelling Connor.

Ty and Tommy jump back a little, but Wilbur continues seated intently. Will Connor be able to snap out of it on his own? Or will Wilbur have to slap him too?

His question answers itself, as Connor's vocalising yells fade away into silence. With vibrating, wide eyes, Connor blinks. Visible beads of sweat trickle down his forehead, and he swallows back the lump in his throat. Connor takes a step back from the glass jar, clenching his chest. He's managed to overcome it.

Ignoring his dazed mental state, Wilbur quickly perks up, "what did you see?"

Connor sucks in a few deep breaths, before dropping his hand. "Wow," is all he breathes.

"Dude," Ty comments facetiously, with a small smirk on his lips, "you looked like you were giving birth."

A snicker slips out from Tommy's lips, and he quickly clasps a hand over his mouth to stifle back his laughter. Ty laughs at this, which makes Wilbur frown.

"Both of you, stop!" Wilbur snaps, "this is serious. Connor, tell us what you saw."

Connor nods feebly, murmuring, "Um, yes, I..." but could say nothing else, letting those few words hang there for a few delayed seconds. He blinks again.

"I was... In a forest," Connor recalls, regaining his consciousness back. "And... I was with you, Wilbur, and. . . Technoblade? Yeah, for some weird reason, the three of us were wandering together in some forest, as if we were lost. Then the pace picked up, and we started to run. Super fast."

As he was recounting his experience, Tommy and Ty had fallen silent. Wilbur continues to listen observantly.

"And then everything started to blur..." his eyebrows furrow again as he speaks, as if he's already forgetting his nightmare. "Uh... it all blurred and... then I was attacked by some creature. Everything was spinning for me so I couldn't tell who or what it was. I just knew that it couldn't be human."

He jabs a finger at his forearm. "And then, I whipped out this giant syringe and stabbed it into their forearm, except even though I was injecting it into somebody else it felt like I was doing it to myself. I can't even describe it... it was a type of pain I've never felt before. . ."

_Forest, attacker, and giant syringe._ Interesting observations. So far, the only connection Wilbur can notice here is the same setting. But this so-called 'attacker'... could it be an infected? Could it even be _Schlatt?_

"After that happened, everything started to blur and swirl and flash in different colours. I think I must have gotten shoved, or tripped over, because I started tumbling down some hill. And just before everything went black... I saw a bridge, with a lake connecting to some sort of stream."

That concludes his side of his story. With that, the others are left speechless — until Tommy breaks the silence.

"It doesn't really sound that scary," he shrugs.

Connor nods. "Ehh, well it wasn't scary or anything. Just very... overwhelming. And nauseating."

Wilbur's eyes narrow. 

_So even though the river's supposed to show you your darkest nightmare, that doesn't always mean it would be scary? In that case, I wonder what Tommy had seen. I should probably ask him once Ty finishes. And then, I'll get Schlatt to elaborate on hi—_

"Hey," Connor's voice heightens, "where did Schlatt go?"

Snapping Wilbur out of his stream of consciousness and into reality's shoes, he looks up, and notices that Schlatt isn't in the room. Did he leave when he wasn't looking?

Tommy turns around at the position Schlatt had stood, and also finds that he's gone. Putting a finger to his chin, he says in an underlying tone, "usually I'd say he's paying his taxes, but I don't even know if the government is alive."

Ty turns to face Wilbur. "I could go find him if you w—?"

"No, it's fine," Wilbur puts a gentle hand on his shoulder, tapping it. "You watch your reflection now. Connor, if it gets too bad, snap him out of it. I'll go find Schlatt."

As Wilbur makes his way over to the exit door to the specimens laboratory, he hears Connor ask in the background: "Wait... what do you mean 'snap him out of it'?"

"He means child abuse," Tommy answers, "you know, slapping a child - a MINOR - in the face." Connor opens his mouth to reply, but by the time he does, Wilbur's already out the room.

✥ ✥ ✥

"Schlatt?" Wilbur calls out, gliding down the hallway with swift, steady steps. As he predicted, no response. Running down the hall, his feet scuff to a stop in front of the living room entrance. He isn't there.

For some reason, he feels his breathing compunctiously pick up, and his heart starts to race inside his ribcage. Wilbur shakes the stirring feelings off, rushing over to quickly check the kitchen. Nope, not there either. Did he go outside?

Without hesitation, he rushes to the front door and peaks out — to his dismay, the front porch lays bare. He checks the bedroom, and the bathroom, and even the backyard. Darting back and forth around the house, each empty location only making his anxiety rise. Until he realises — there's one room he had forgotten to check.

Face palming, he mutters, "Wilbur, how stupid are you?", before starting toward the stairs leading down to the research base. As he reaches the bottom of the step, a wave of pure relief washes over him as he finds Schlatt down there. The relief doesn't last long, however, when he takes notice of Schlatt's unusual figure.

His shoulders are arched forward as he stands in a partially-slumped position, craning his neck up to stare at the large screen casted by the projector.

On the screen is LIVE footage of the virus statistics; it's lines and stats are skyrocketing, passing the limits of the chart. As each second goes by, the numbers only rise even more.  
Hypnotised by the results, Schlatt's wide eyes shake, as they bulge out of his eye sockets like a traumatised bug. His face is ashen and ghost-like, and his hands are shivering.

With a voice as hollow and dead as the depths of night, he murmurs subconsciously: _"We're fucked."_

Wilbur stops. _'We're fucked'?_ What does he mean by that? What is...?

". . . What?" That's all he can muster out to say.

Schlatt twitches, and without turning around he reiterates himself. "I said, we're fucked, Wil. We're all going to die and there's nothing we can do about it."

His eyes never leave the screen as he speaks with an empty sternness.

"All this research on the virus," he goes on, his voice as desolate as ever, "trying to figure out where it came from and discover a cure... And the river of horrors, too. Looking at our visions... _everything we've been doing_ — **it's all fucking meaningless**. There's no point to any of this. We're all going to die, whether it's by being infected or being devoured. There's absolutely no way we're going to outlive this."

Wilbur feels his heart twist at the words, unable to comprehend the fact that Schlatt _had truly lost all sense of hope._

_  
Just one spark of hope is all we need to push on. Without that. . ._

_Then everything truly **is** meaningless._

He can't let Schlatt give up, not yet. Not when they're finally moving closer to untying the truth.

"No, Schlatt. That's not—"

"We should just stop already." he snaps all of a sudden, his voice thickening. "Stop it with this false hope, and wasting our time with pointless research. It's not going to get us fucking anywhere and it's just a waste of time. This is the end. This is really the end; where humanity will go extinct. We're so fucked, there's no way out of this."

"That's not true!" Wilbur yells back, banging a fist at the wall. He's had it with this — with the way he's been speaking, talking, acting. It's as if it's suddenly Schlatt's job to be the most depressed man on the earth. Besides, that role is taken by Technoblade already. "We haven't lost all hope yet! After all, _we're all still alive."_

 _"Not for long."_ His hazel depths remain glued to the stats. A rising anxiety laces between his words. "For all you know, I could be infected already."

 _Stop it with this pessimist talk._ "Well, if we manage to find a cure, then you'll be the first to survive the infection."

"And what are the odds of that ever happening, Wilbur?" he hisses, trying to control his voice as it was beginning to turn a little hysterical. "What are the chances that _you'll_ end up finding your little _fuckin' antedote_ in the timespan of a _week? (Stop it.)_ Or even less, maybe. What if I become a monster tomorrow? Or tonight? Or right now? What if I were to just rip your fucking head off right now, and gouge out your brains? _(Stop it with this, Schlatt.)_ Will you ever be able to cure me when that happens? Because whose to say none of that will happen right no—?"

" **Shut up!"** he shrieks, tearing his vocal chords in half as the cries shoot raw out his mouth. " **Just _shut the fuck up!!"_**

Schlatt's lips zip shut.

His solace voice set afire by his own evolving frustration, he proceed to yell, "you're not infected, you hear me?! You're not fucking infected, you dumb bitch!"

He points at Schlatt, even despite him not looking back. "Stop spewing out this bullshit and listen to yourself for God's sake! We're **going** to find a cure. Do you know how many legends we've uncovered? And myths we've debunked? Hundreds. And you know how many cases we've solved in our years of working as the MCIA? Thousands! Yeah, this plague goes beyond anything we've ever done, but in the end it's just another step to our mission, and that doesn't make it any less difficult to solve."

For the first time today, Schlatt finally turns around. His chafed, bloodshot eyes meet his, glistening vaguely underneath the dim light of the base; he wears an abstract mendacious look over his face, almost cathartic in a way. Deep in his eyes, Wilbur can see something distinct — yearning, for purpose. Like he's trying to find something to believe in, and the only way he can do that is by looking through the sinews rooted deep in his heart.

"We've done this sort of thing for years, Schlatt," he relents. "Everything we've achieved, everything we've done... it's all led up to this moment. In the end, this virus is just another case for us to solve. And I mean it, with every inch of my being, when I say that **we will find a cure no matter what it takes**. And I swear to God, if I ever hear you start talking more bullshit about how you're infected, I'm going to kill you myself."

Schlatt's left speechless. Despite Wilbur's furrowing eyebrows, a small smirk curls along his lips. "I'm not gonna let your arrogant ass turn into those things even if it's the last thing I do."

". . . You're delusional, you know that right?" A soft smile curves across his face.

"I'd prefer to use 'optimistic'."

"Now you're just sounding gay."

To Wilbur's surprise, he finds himself laughing at this. Faced upon his reaction, a chuckle slides out from Schlatt's lips.

There's no remote reasoning behind Wilbur's laughter; in fact, there's no remote reasoning behind anything at all. All his thoughts are scattered in different directions, and his thought process had become incoherent and disoriented. Perhaps he's actually laughing from hysteria.

"I told you they'd be in—... Uh.. you guys alright?"

Wilbur jerks around, and finds Connor, Tommy, and Ty standing together at the front entrance of the research base. The voice came from Connor.

He clasps a hand around his mouth, stifling back his remaining, jittering chuckles, before clearing his throat. "Yeah. We're—we're fine. How did it go?"

He looks at Ty as he speaks, and sees that he's noticeably shivering. His pupils are vacant, zoned out and staring off into a hollow abyss. He looks like he had just witnessed something _traumatising._ Ty swallows, silent.

"I'd say it went pretty fucking terrible," Tommy comments.

"Thanks Sherlock," Schlatt speaks up in irony, "wouldn't have ever realised it if you never told us that."

Ignoring the two, Wilbur pushes past Schlatt and marches right toward Ty. He grabs him by the shoulders, bending down to reach his level. With assertive words, he asks, "Ty? You can hear me, right?" _He could still be dazed..._

With an abstract expression, Ty nods slowly. ". . . Yes."

Wilbur bites his lip. "Do you think you can tell us what you saw?"

". . . Yes."

He sighs, disappointed. He doesn't even need to look at Connor for him to know he's talking to him. "You didn't snap him out of it, didn't you?"

_"I tried to but I couldn't hit a child!"_

Tommy frowns. "But... you punched me yesterday!"

"You don't count." Everybody but Ty says this in sync.

"... You are all dicks."

And then, after an everlasting dragging delay, Ty speaks up, with half-slurring words. "Oh my god... oh my god. It was bad, it was so, so bad. It was... oh god. I think I might be sick."

"If you're gonna be sick, then be sick somewhere where there's no carpet."

Wilbur shoots Schlatt a _'seriously?'_ look. Whether he was joking or not, now wasn't the time for witty remarks. But even despite his visible irritation, a small part of Wilbur — rooted deep in his heart — is relieved. Schlatt's still himself. _He hasn't changed._

Ty shakes his head, sucking in a few deep breaths as he clutches his shirt. "N—No, I'm fine. . . I just. . . I didn't expect to see. . . well. . ."

He screws his eyes shut, exhaling and inhaling a few breaths. And then, he releases his shirt, straightening his posture. "Okay. I'm okay. How descriptive do you want me to be, Wilbur?"

"As descriptive as you can," Wilbur nods back.

"Okay," Ty shakes his head a little, before seating himself down on a chair beside the table. "Well. . .

It began with me in a small town that looked like it was in the countryside, or some woodlands region. I was running pretty fast down the footpath... there were also people behind me, but I never turned around to see who they were. I just kept on running forward, in the dead of night. There were no stars, and most the streetlights didn't work.

When I reached the end of the pathway, I turned a corner and ran straight into this forest. . . I didn't know why... I think, it just called out to me somehow. Looking back, I don't know why I did it, but in the spur of the moment it just felt right.

So I ran through the forest, and when I got pretty deep in, I felt a hand suddenly grab my shoulder. I jerked around and saw. . . oh my god."

He pauses his story, leaving everybody holding their breath in anticipation. _What did he see?_ Wilbur ponders. Could it be the same person Connor had seen? Or who Wilbur had seen? Could it be. . .

Wilbur looks at Schlatt, whose listening intently on Ty's story.

"I saw a..." Ty starts, "a **_monster_** _._ But I saw it's face for only a split second before I was thrown to the ground so I can't exactly remember every detail... but I just know that it had this crazy, inhumane look in it's eyes. There was no way it was human, it had to have been something else. And, it had the pure intent to kill.

I was thrown to the ground, and it pinned me down and then my vision started to get all swirly and blurry. I felt one of its hands grab at my neck and squeeze it so hard I felt like I'd just get decapitated... and then... oh god... with it's other hand, it... it..."

"It... _what?"_ Tommy whispers.

"It pounded it... _Into my stomach._

It rammed it's entire fist into my stomach so hard it tore right through me like p-p—paper... **Like paper!** My face had been clawed so much my entire vision was red. But even through my own blood I saw it, flipping my stomach inside out, tearing out my insides and. . . and. . .

_. . ._ **_eating it."_ **

He stops, and there's a few beats of stunned silence. Everyone's in complete shock.

". . . Holy shit," Tommy murmurs, "holy. . . shit. . ."

"Jesus Christ." Schlatt blurts out, worry washing over his hazel, chafed eyes.

Wilbur feels the hair on the surface of his skin prick up. _That's. . . horrific. He's only 16._ ** _16!!_** _He shouldn't have seen that. Was it really the right decision to let him?_

And then, a horrifying thought flitters across in his mind; _the future._ If Schlatt becomes infected, then that would confirm Wilbur's theory of the visions foreboding the future. And if that really does happen, then that would mean Ty...

He gulps. With glass words, he mumbles subconsciously.

". . . You should have never looked into the water."

Ty bats back immediately. "What?! No, don't say that! Don't make me regret having to see that!"

His voice trails off, before descending into a soft murmur, as if questioning himself: "It had to have been done, right Wilbur? It was part of our mission. . . Surely, there was . . ."

"Shit, shit, shit.." Tommy mutters, seeming a little too distressed. Ty picks up on this.

"Tommy?" he asks, a little worried.

Running a hand through his dirty blonde hair, he mumbles, "you died."

"No," Schlatt comments, "he definitely survived that—"

"No, no— I mean.." he shakes his head, trying to control his voice, "you _died._ That was _my vision._ In my vision **you died!"**

A stunned silence swoops over the group of boys. Wilbur's head pounds, as his heart rate grows increasingly faster.

_No... no, it can't be... They're all...?_

"In my vision, I was running through a forest," the boy begins. "At some point, I was surrounded by a bunch of bushes, so I swatted them out my way. And behind it... I saw **you."**

His wide eyes trail over to Ty's. "I saw your body, sprawled on the floor, all... well, fuck. You looked like you were ravened by an animal. I knew there was no way you'd survive whatever attack you had, not looking like that..."

The horror in Ty's eyes flicker even brighter, like a beacon in the night. He murmurs something inaudible under his breath.

Feeling an intense, tumultuous bewilderment, Connor reiterates. "You mean to tell us that. . . our nightmares are all linked?"

Wilbur scratches his chin. _I knew they were all connected in some way._

"If it wasn't confirmed before," he starts, "then it sure is now. If Ty and Tommy's nightmares are linked, then we could presume that in one way or another all our visions are connected, too."

He then pauses. ". . . but, we're still missing a few more pieces. Schlatt?"

Wilbur turns to face Schlatt, whose leaning a hand against a desk with scattered papers. "You've seen your vision too, right? You told me it had to do with you being broke and homeless, but surely there's more to it than that."

Schlatt blinks blankly for a few seconds, before shaking his head, shrugging casually. "Nah, it's pretty much exactly what I said. My nightmare began with me walking down the streets. I had no money, no home, no family. Completely alone, and probably in debt, too. That was all I had seen. Which is making me think how the fuck did you guys get all these trippy gory forest and shit nightmares?"

Wilbur narrows his eyes. While the rest of the group seems pretty convinced, he can't help but not ignore the skeptical, mendacious feeling tangling his gut. Surely, there's more. Is that really all it was? He's aware of Schlatt's fear of being in debt... but _c'mon._ The story can't _just_ be that. That would prove the whole connection theory wrong.

"Wait a minute, Wilbur," Tommy speaks up, pointing a finger at the man. "You never told us what _you_ saw."

Agreed nods ripple throughout the group. Wilbur bites back a smirk. _I expected that._

"Oh yeah. Whoops, I almost forgot about that. I'll tell you now, then," Wilbur exclaims, playing a cunningly forgetful expression. "I was also in a forest. I had been hiding behind this tree, watching. . . well, one of **them** — the **infected** — try to feed on some human. I jumped out from hiding and tried to help, but the creature ended up targetting me instead. I got attacked by it, and almost got hammered with it's mallet it was carrying. The split second before I met my fate, was when I woke up."

Once he finishes explaining, he purses his lips, surprised at himself. The lie was so clear and effortless. Relief floods him, keeping him content with the lie he had acted. Yes, he had tampered quite a lot with the real truth, but it wasn't like he took away the main points. It was for the best, really.

"So it seems like all our visions took place in a forest..." Ty muses aloud, voice still a little shaky. "Apart from Schlatt, which was a city. This really makes no sense. . ."

Wilbur's head hurts just hearing these theories.

"Maybe these visions are supposed to be a sign?" Tommy suggests, in attempt to subside the anxiety of apprehension. "Maybe they're not necessarily of the future, but a sign? Surely the river is trying to tell us how to cure the virus? I mean, it's obvious the river and the virus are connected, since these 'attackers' we've seen are probably all infected. . ."

Connor puts a finger to his chin. "A sign? So you're saying these visions are actually _warnings_ of what might happen if we don't cure the virus...?"

"Sorta?"

"Wait." Connor furrows his eyebrows, as another theory whispers in his mind. "All of us were attacked in some way, right? What if these attackers. . . were actually all just by **the same individual?"**

There are a few gasps, and Ty speaks up again. "You mean. . . this is all taken place in a similar timeframe?"

"Not only that," Connor adds, "but maybe even the **same day."**

It's Wilbur's turn to input, now. But he must be careful with how he words things, because he knows a lot more information than the rest. "Considering these attacks all took place in a forest, I'd have to agree with Connor. Not even the same day, but maybe even the same **hour** this all happened. The only one that doesn't link up at all. . . is Schlatt's."

"I wonder why that could be," Schlatt mumbles, catching the attention of Wilbur, who turns to give him a dubious glare.

"Schlatt, is that all you really have to say?"

"I told you already, that's all I know," he snaps back, which makes everyone fall silent. Quickly realising the awkward silence he just manifested, he clears his throat. ". . .Well, we're wasting time talking about this. We know the visions are linked, and they have to do with this cannibalistic virus going around. Future or not, there's no way proving what this shit tells until it happens."

Making his way out the exit door, Wilbur calls out. "Wh—hey, where are you going?"

"To my room."

"But what about the virus?" Tommy quickly perks in, "and the mission—?!"

"I'm taking a break, figure it out yourself."

He leaves the room quietly. And of course, Wilbur can't stop himself from following. 


	6. PT6 - HATRED

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY ON . . .
> 
> \- “"Did you seriously have to wake us all up at 6:00AM for this?"  
> \- "Both of you, stop!” Wilbur snaps, “this is serious. Connor, tell us what you saw.”  
> \- With a voice as hollow and dead as the depths of night, he murmurs subconsciously: "We're fucked."  
> \- /Just one spark of hope is all we need to push on. Without that. . . Then everything truly is meaningless./  
> \- "No, no— I mean.." he shakes his head, trying to control his voice, "you died. That was my vision. In my vision you died!"
> 
> . . .

**RIVER OF HORRORS**

**PART 6**

**───── ❝ HATRED ❞ ─────**

_**WARNING: This chapter will contain NSFW references** _

_"You're hiding something from me."_

The morning sunlight spills onto the surface of his face through the open window as he bursts through the bedroom door. It's been almost about 2 hours since 6:00AM, but to Wilbur it feels like morning had taken all day to pass.

Schlatt, whose sitting on the bed with his back facing Wilbur, lets out an intuitive sigh.

"You really like following me, huh? You're like a dog, Wil."

Wilbur feels his cheeks flush unprecedentedly, although however much he tries to keep his focus on his task, he finds his thoughts wandering off into the depths of his mind; scattered cages of repression and oblivion. He feels his own feverish fatigue eating him whole; the consequences of the never-ending vigil nights catching up to him.  
  


... _No, I'm not letting you dodge my question this time, Schlatt. No matter how tired I am.  
  
_

"What did you _really_ _see_ , Schlatt?" he presses on, closing and locking the door behind him as he takes a prominent step forward. "I know you're keeping something about your vision from us — from _me. Why are you lying to me?"_

Schlatt turns around at this, and Wilbur only just now notices the top button of Schlatt's white collar shirt is undone. He usually almost always wears a suit and tie, but considering how he had woken everyone up so early in the morning, he had been wearing his cerulean sweater the whole time. The white collar must have been an undershirt.

With wrapped bandages are obscuring the skin of his neck, he looks at him with slightly ecstatic, but mostly jaded eyes. He opens his mouth, and capriciously says something Wilbur had never anticipated him to say:

_"What about your vision, Wilbur?"_

And then, Schlatt gets up from the bed, taking steady steps toward Wilbur, as he throws more accusing questions at him.

"Who was the man that attacked you? And the human that it attacked before it 'targeted' you? I know you know, Wilbur. Because it wouldn't make any damn sense if you didn't. You were so arrogant — and annoyingly secretive — about your vision back at the River when I asked. So what the hell made you suddenly change your mind about it and tell it to everyone with ease? Huh? None of that makes any sense. Do you want to explain that?"

Standing only a few feet away from him now, he glares at him with eyes that glimmer with nothing but tempest, demanding accusation. Wilbur can't help but nervously swallow down the lump in his throat. Had he seen through his lie that easily? He clutches his hand, which had grown increasingly sweaty.

"I... well..." he stutters. For the first time, his mind is completely empty. "It's... that's—that's not..."

_"Exactly."_

Leaning in closer, Schlatt narrows his eyes, not breaking his stare as he hisses through seethed teeth. "Just like how you have things you keep from me, Wilbur, I have things I keep from you."

He lets the words hang there for a while, shunning Wilbur's pellucid uneasiness as the air around the two hardens. The dense atmosphere working in tandem with the stagnant turmoil makes the room exude an overwhelming, fleeting feeling of inculpation.

After seconds tediously haul on, Schlatt takes a few steps back from the speechless man. He begins to unbutton his shirt, and starts to take it off.

 _What are you doing?_ That's what he wants to ask him, anyway. But for some reason, his voice can't seem to formulate audible words. Instead, he stands there like a gaping fish, half deluded.

But once Schlatt removes his shirt, he can see — the visibly dark blue veins beneath the surface of his skin in his chest, connecting up to his neck — pulsing like a wildfire. Slowly, he starts to unwrap the bandages around his neck, until behind it reveals a vile scar.

"Here," Schlatt mutters. "This is what it did to me."

The wound he had gotten from being attacked — it was horrendous. It looks as if his entire throat had been clawed out; and without proper medical help from the hospital, he could rely on was his own bodily cells and the natural process of haemostasis to heal him... but even so, it looks terribly wounded.

Crimson blood coagulated around the large gash; the edges of it, however, are tinted a dark bluish-purple. And dark blue — almost _black —_ accentuated veins connect from his neck down to his chest and even to his shoulder. It looks as if his wound had, in some way, _spread_ around the upper half of his body. It looks sickening.

Wilbur's eyes grow wider by the second as he examines the injury. Putting a hand to his mouth, he mumbles. "Jesus... your..."

"I know."

_It's. . . it's a lot more worse than I thought. . ._

"This isn't normal, isn't it?" The aggressiveness in Schlatt's voice assuages, replaced with solace. ". . . I don't really know what will end up happening, Wilbur. But. . . I'm almost certain that I'm **infected."  
  
**

****_No..._

_  
Schlatt can't be infected._ **_He can't.  
  
_ **

**_I promised him he wouldn't be infected.  
  
_ **

His head starts to spin, once again feverish and deranged from both lack of sleep and overwhelmingness of everything going on. It's beginning to grow hard to decipher reality and his own imagination. Is this real? Is any of this real?  
  


Schlatt isn't infected, right? He's not. He _can't be. He can't be infected because Wilbur. . ._

"I think I'm going to die."

Wilbur feels everything around him freeze at the words. He looks at Schlatt, with a hard, determined look in his eyes, and takes a step toward him.

"No you're not."

"Yes I will," Schlatt insists. "I'm going to die a monster! All alone, surrounded by the flesh of the humans I will devour!"

He stops pacing, until he's only a few inches away from Schlatt. He feels his breath hitch, as his mind swirls, echoing the words that came out of Schlatt's mouth over and over again in his head like a broken record.

In between the hysterical, scattered thoughts reverberating in his mind, differing only in respect of inflections, he finds himself clutching onto a strand of hopeless sanity. An irrational thought. A crazy idea.

_Maybe. . .  
  
_

_Maybe if I become infected, too, the future will change.  
  
_

_Maybe Ty won't die.  
  
_

_Maybe Connor wouldn't have been attacked.  
  
_

_Maybe Tommy would have been safe.  
  
_

_Maybe Schlatt . . .  
  
_

His pulse flows hot with blood, as his heart races on fire inside his ribcage. Deliriousness engulfs his mind whole, tangling the wires inside his brain.

_That's it._

_Yeah, that's it._

His eyes flutter closed, as he wraps a hand around his neck.  
  


_If we become infected, we'll run away together. We'll go somewhere far, far away, and live infected. Infected together._

_Just the two of us monsters,  
  
_

He leans into Schlatt's face.  
  


. . . _living in a world surrounded by other monsters like us.  
  
_

Senses tingling with deliriousness, and mind spinning with hysteria, he crashes his lips into Schlatt's.

✥ ✥ ✥

To his surprise, he doesn't fight back against this. Instead, he quickly finds himself melding into the interlocked kiss, flitting his eyes shut, too.

As his lips melt into his, he runs a hand down his neck. The fire in Wilbur's heart roars louder in his chest, as he feels his senses flooded with crashing waves of mixed emotions — ecstasy; corybantic; unhinged and delirious. His face flushes, heating his entire body as he presses it against Schlatt's.

Something wild, and deranged, cackles behind in the back of his mind; as if his own frenzied deliriousness is laughing at himself. _You're crazy, you've gone crazy!_

But he doesn't care, anymore. The last of his rationality slips away from his grasp, and he finds himself spontaneously pressing his hand down on Schlatt's chest, pushing him back-first onto the bed.

Parting his lips away, he whispers in his ear. "Now you won't die alone."

Schlatt shudders beneath him as his hot breath stimulates his senses. Red-faced and lying underneath Wilbur's body, he replies infuriated. "What the fuck have you done, Wilbur? What the hell is wrong with you?! Now you just..."

His voice trails off, as Wilbur presses his groin over his; one clawing hand pinned on the sheets, and the other on his cheek, he leans in close until his mouth hovers only a few centimetres above his.

"Even if you are infected," he elicits, with slurred words, " _we'll both be infected together."  
_

He trails the hand touching Schlatt's cheek down to his collarbone. " _We could run away, Schlatt. If the virus really does get to us, we'll just run away together. We can leave behind the MCIA, and live just the two of us out on the surface._ **_We'll be monsters, together."_**

 ****"Wilbur. . ." Schlatt breathes back, "you. . . idiot. . ."

His fingers brush over his chest, as an electric wave of euphoria pricks his senses. With delicate words, he whispers.

_"You won't have to be alone, anymore."  
  
_

His fingers run down his waist.  
  


". . . Fuck... you. . ." he mumbles submissively between heavy breathes.

They hover over his crotch.

"I know I said that I won't let you get infected, and that we'll find a cure." Does he even know what he's saying? His head spins too fast, and his blood flows too hot, for him to even identify whether this is all a fever dream or reality. "I know that's what I said today, but forget that. Forget everything I said, Schlatt. _I don't care about the cure, anymore, or the virus. I just want you to be with me. I don't want you to go."_

Slowly, he slips the tips of his fingers inside his pants, feeling around. Impulsively, he leans back into his lips, colliding into them more harder this time.

_  
"I won't let you go. . . without me."_

His mouth burns against his as he mumbles.  
  


**_" . . . even if it means we'll both die."_ **

_Do I really love him . . .?  
  
_

_Do I really love Schlatt?_

_. . . Or am I just afraid of letting him go?_

✥ ✥ ✥

Comforting silence is the only thing that fills the room.

Laying topless, wearing nothing but shorts, underneath the bed sheets, Schlatt rests both palms behind the back of his head. He's been staring at the ceiling for God knows how long; sitting deeply submerged in his own thoughts, he had lost track of time long ago.

Out of the blue, he mulls over, quietly, ". . . that man was me, wasn't it?"

He cranes his neck to the right, and sees Wilbur laying shirtless and silent with an arm hanging over the bed.

"I killed Ty. And I hurt all of you."

Silence.

Schlatt shuffles, leaning on the side of his body as he faces the unconscious Wilbur.

". . . I love you, Wilbur."

Soft snores are his only response.

". . . Right, you're asleep. You've been awake for days. You probably did all of this because you were high off restlessness. Ha, you'll probably forget most of this by the time you wake up."

He closes his eyes. Of course, Wilbur's asleep. So why is he talking? There's no point.

"I wouldn't lie to you, Wil," he whispers subconsciously, even in spite of knowing he won't hear him. "I wouldn't do that. It's just. . . sometimes, it's for the better to not tell the whole truth."

He sits up from the bed, groggily chucking on his blue sweater, before stepping out the bed. Giving Wilbur one last glance, he exits the room swiftly, pondering to himself as he does so:

_  
How long will it take before I lose myself? Before we_ **_both_ ** **_lose_ ** **_ourselves_ ** _?_

✥ ✥ ✥

It's been about 4 days since what had happened. When Wilbur had woken up, it was already the next day — he had slept for practically the entire day. As much as he hated to admit it, he really did need the sleep.

At first, he had felt a little disorientated, but it took only a couple of long minutes for him to recollect the events that had happened before he slept. He doesn't remember much of what had happened, other than making out with Schlatt and falling asleep. The thought made him shudder — did he seriously do that? It was completely out of character for him, let alone humiliating.

He could also barely remember what he said too, but he knew whatever it was, it was probably stupid. The moment he woke up, he told Schlatt whatever happened between them yesterday only happened because of his deliriousness, and that he wanted Schlatt to forget about it. He responded with only an awkward nod.

But then, another unsettling thought hovered over him during this 4 day time period — the infection. What he had seen on Schlatt's neck was surely no mistake — the scar, the veins... it was real. And if that really was a sign of infection, that would mean that Wibur would most likely be infected too, right?

 _He_ did this — because of his stupidity, and recklessness, _he got himself infected._ What the hell is he going to do, now? This thought had been lingering nonstop in his mind for days now, yet he hasn't been feeling any symptoms. This lack of showing symptoms had been the only thing reassuring himself.

Schlatt, on the other hand. . .

Something isn't right. Ever since that day, he had been a lot more distant from him. Maybe it was because of the awkward tension between them, or the fact that he was embarrassed, too. Whatever the reason was, it had kept Schlatt away from Wilbur for a while. He had also been spending less time in the research base with the others, and more time on his own outside.

Wilbur notices he spent a lot of the days sitting outside on the porch, either gazing off into the forest distance, or writing something down in a notebook. Typically, he'd ask what was wrong, but Wilbur decided it might be best to leave him alone for a little bit.

Besides, he's busy with his own tasks, too. The next day, he apologised to the group for sleeping in, and decided to do more research on what's been happening. Research, discussion, eat, and sleep; it was the same cycle over and over, and that's all they've been doing for the past 4 days. But really, at this point, they're just tossing around the same load of information with different orders. In reality, it was getting them absolutely nowhere.

Which was why Wilbur had decided to take a step up. At 6:00 — this time, at night rather then morning — he gathered everyone in a group around the dining table to discuss his new plan.

"I've decided there's no point in us waiting any longer," he starts. "If we want to find a cure to the virus, or at least find out more about it, then we're going to have to do something more."

His eyes scan sharply around the group of faces, until they land over Schlatt. His expression shifts from assertive to guilty for a split second, but the feeling is ephemeral, as he quickly reverts back to his authoritativeness in no time.

"I. . . I know I might have said some things that... contradict what I'm saying... to certain people..." he glances at Schlatt pitifully as he says this. ". . . But I hadn't been myself at the time. Luckily, my insomnia isn't as bad as it was before now, so I managed to get some good sleep. So I can assure you all now, that I know exactly what I'm doing and saying."

But in truth, he doesn't actually know if what he's about to say is the right decision or not.

"What are you suggesting we should do then, Wilbur?" Connor queries, chiming in.

"I'm suggesting," he starts, "that I'm going to go to the Outside World. With Schlatt."

Everybody gasps; it was an answer everybody had least expected.

"Out there?!" Ty exclaims, with a higher pitch of worry in his voice. "But it's dangerous!"

Connor nods frantically. "Y—Yeah! What if it's even worse than before out there?!"

"Are you mad? You two could get killed!" That came from Tommy, surprisingly.

"I know, I know, it's a huge risk." Wilbur frowns. He had expected a similar response. "But it's the only way we'll be able to—"

_"No."_

Schlatt's grave voice interjects him from finishing his sentence; he looks over to him, whose standing beside the table. His vacant eyes hover over nothing in particular.

"What...?" Wilbur blinks.

There's a delicate, intermittent movements on one half of his face. Twitch... twitch... twitching? As if the muscles were spasming.

"I'm not going out there." The words run sombre and firm from his mouth.

"Well, Schlatt. . ." Wilbur begins, already regretting his plan, though there was no way he could go back now. "We already agreed that you and Connor won't go out there again. And none of us can go alone, either. We're the best—"

To his surprise, a snicker slips out from Schlatt's throat, followed by cryptic, hysterical-like laughter. "Are you out of your mind, Wilbur? Do you even know what you're saying?"

He jabs at finger at his chest, as he snaps, "I've _seen_ what was out there, with my own fucking eyeballs. You have **no clue** what you'll be getting yourself into."

He understands his nervousness, but he also knows that over fear comes responsibility. "Of course I know what I'm getting myself into! You think I don't know what's out there? Look, I've been thinking about this a lot for the past few days. We're not going to solve this mission relying on research alone. We need to take a—"

"No, no, no, nononononono..." he runs both hands through his hair, as the panic and distress in his voice threatens to rise. "You don't understand. You don't understand anything!! We'll—We'll _die_ if we go out there! Those things will gourge on and devour us until we are nothing but skin and fucking bones!"

The rest of the boys give each other anxious glances, realising where this conversation may be leading to. Connor quickly gets up, tugging on Schlatt's shoulder to try stop this before it gets worse.

"Schlatt, calm—"

"Calm what?" he snaps, jerking his shoulder to shake his hand off. He glares hard deep into Connor's eyes; a flickering flame of rage ignites in his pupils as he does so. "Calm _down?_ You want me to calm the fuck down when we're in the middle of a fucking _apocalypse?_ When one of us could be devoured right here, right now, at any second? When we could all be cannibalistic monsters hiding behind the skin of a normal human?!"

It's Wilbur's turn to grab Schlatt — this time, by the wrist. "Schlatt, listen!" his voice is desperate and urgent as he begs. "We're all just as scared as you are. But we might be the world's last hope. If we could just research...—"

 _"Well fuck your research!"_ he yells, throwing his hand off of him as he kicks down one of the dining rooms chairs. Ty, who was sitting close to that chair, hurriedly scoots further back. His voice bounces off the walls, reverberating condescendingly. Throat on fire, his yells don't cease.

"Fuck the river of horrors, and fuck this _fucking virus!!_ In fact, **_fuck you all!"_**

As he yells, his enraged eyes glide over every single one of the boys. With bitter, furious venom, he hisses at them. "All of you — you're all fucking delusional! Don't you see that everything we do now is hopeless? All of your ignorance will end up getting us all killed sooner than this virus!"

He catapults a fist into the table, sending a loud crack surge through the surface the mahogany wood. A wave of terror floods Wilbur's insides as he watches Schlatt's fit; the twitching in his face relents only slightly. But what terrified him the most was his _eyes;_ the emptiness he had seen only minutes before was replaced by something entirely foreign — fury.

"I wish I never joined this stupid fucking agency!" he yells out again, his knuckles pulsing wildly by the force of slamming it into the table. "I wish I never wasted my life here working as a fucking lab rat! I hate you, Connor! I hate you Tommy! And Ty! All of you, annoying pieces of fucking shit! I hate all of you bastards!"

"Schlatt..." Wilbur tries to speak up, but for a few seconds he's almost forgotten how to speak. Cutting him from finishing his sentence, however, are the rough fingers of Schlatt's hand grasping around his neck. Being pushed back on his chair and into the ledge of the table, Schlatt growls.

"And you. **_You."_**

The raging fire in his eyes sparks brighter then ever. " _You're the worst of all of them._ You just don't shut the fuck up about your research. You're trying to always act like you're in the right, that you know what you're doing. That you're some white knight, some _hero."_

He squeezes his fingers around his neck a little tighter, stopping Wilbur from speaking. He gasps, spluttering.

"Schlatt, stop!" Ty exclaims, only to receive an enraged "shut the fuck up and let me finish!" from Schlatt.

He turns back to Wilbur, grinding his teeth as he yells with a poisonous vexation. "You pretend people mean something to you, when really you just use them like tools for your own gain! You don't mean a word you say, because behind your fake mask you're just a **dirty, fucking, liar. "  
  
**

_He's gone mad, hasn't he? Is it the virus... ? He's gone mad but. . . why does it feel like what he's saying. . . is coming from his own heart?  
  
_

A scowl crosses his un-Botoxed forehead, as his bloodshot eyes glare deep into his own soul. With an appearance that suggested he had just this moment been reborn from the fires and depths of hell, he hisses menacingly, as Wilbur's blood curdles.

"You'd go on, and on, about you'll always be there for someone, building your trust with them even to the point when you make them feel like they mean something to you — only to break it to save your fucking ass! You'd leave them in a split second without hesitation if it means you'll collect _'more research' !!_ You spew out bullshit, meaningless words faster than a fucking military fighter jet!!"

His fingers start to dig into the flesh of Wilbur's neck, causing another pained groan to slip from his mouth. A thin stream of blood trickles down the corner of his lower lip, as he tries to desperately beg for air. _S...S...Stop, please..._

He leans closer to him; saliva dripping from his mouth, the raw resentment never leaving his voice as he yells.

 **"Was what we did yesterday all for nothing? _Was that kiss worth nothing?"_ **A sharp pain strikes at the sinews of Wilbur's heart as he hears those words. " _Those things you told me that day. . . running away together. Living the rest of our damned lives together. . . Never being alone again._ ** _Did all of that mean nothing to you?! Have you ever thought that maybe you've been the crazy one this whole time?!"_**

_. . . That I've been the crazy one this whole time...?_

He'd answer, but Schlatt's chokehold grip around his neck stops him from doing so. Slowly, he feels the last few breaths of oxygen begin to leave his lungs. Schlatt's hands around him are rough, and hard, and as he shouts he squeezes even tighter. Another terrible gurgle splutters from Wilbur's mouth.

He snarls, a deriding chuckle slithering from between his lips. "You piss me off, Wil. _Everything about you pisses me the fuck off and grinds on my fucking nerves. You're fake, everything about you is all fake."_

 _"Sch—Schl..."_ he gargles, pressing his hands on the table's ledge behind him. He feels splinters already drilling into his palms.

And then, he says something Wilbur would have never imagined he'd say.

**" _I hate you, Wilbur."_**

His heart drops. He feels something tear inside him.

_"I've always hated you!"_ he yells again, raising his voice, _"I've hated everything about you this whole time! You hurt me, and you acted like nothing happened! So you know what?_ ** _I hope you die!_** _I hope you do get fucking infected by this killer virus and die alone in your own pity!"_

_It hurts. Stop it Schlatt. You don't really mean. . ._

"Stop it! Stop it Schlatt!" Tommy shrieks out, grabbing Schlatt's shoulders as he tries to pull him back — but his attempts are futile, and the man doesn't budge. Connor and Ty rush over to try pull Wilbur out of his grasp, but it doesn't work either.

A hysterical laughter wafters sporadically from Schlatt's vocals, as his cackles rumble throughout the dining room. " _Hahahahahahaha! HAHAHA!!"_ His laughs grow only louder and louder, silencing everybody in fear.

With a violently quivering hand, Wilbur lifts it from the table, feebly bringing over as he brushes it along Schlatt's bandaged neck. _Schlatt... listen..._

He coils the tips of his fingers underneath the bandages, and touches his scar.

Schlatt looks down at him, his laughter ceasing. After the slightest of pauses, he blinks, before his eyes grow wide — as if Wilbur's touch was a reminder of the thread of sanity he has left in him. Impulsively, he lets go of his neck. As Wilbur's released, he collapses to the ground, gasping for air. Connor and Ty bend down beside him, helping him catch his breath.

He looks down at his trembling hands, coated lightly with Wilbur's blood. _Oh god._

Schlatt turns slowly over to Tommy, who's standing frozen beside him, watching him in horror. It dawns on him what he had just done.

"Oh god. . . oh no. . ." he murmurs, shaking his head. _"I'm... I'm sorry. . . I. . ."_

_  
I've lost my mind._

Burying his head in his hands, he turns around and darts out the dining room.

✥ ✥ ✥

"Wilbur! Wilbur, wake up!!"

The panicked cries of Connor's voice awakes Wilbur from his terrible slumber. He had gone to sleep last night feeling horrible. Schlatt's words had kept him up most the night, haunting him deep down and filling his lungs with wretched humours. They had tormented his night until he had eventually slept due to exhaustion. And now, however many hours later, he had been awoken in one of the worst ways to be awoken by.

"Wh. . . Connor?" he groggily opens his eyes, sitting up from his bed. It was a surprise, seeing Connor wake him up. Usually that would be Tommy's job. Which is exactly why he feels an anxious apprehension rise in the pits of his stomach. This can't be good news. "What's wrong—?"

"It's Schlatt!" _Oh no._ To his dread, Connor says the exact thing he had been praying for him _not_ to say:

 _"He's— he's gone!_ We can't find him anywhere!"

"What?!" He launches the blanket covers off of him, shooting up to his feet immediately. "Did you check all the rooms? Even the research base?"

"Of course we did, but he's not anywhere!" Connor struggles to contain a steady voice, as trepidation itches alarmingly in his voice. "We tried calling his cell but he hasn't picked up!"

Wilbur's already throwing on a jacket, getting dressed. "Where are the others?"

"They're outside trying to search around the base for—"

"Tell them to get inside right now." He commands sternly, slipping on his boots. "There's no use trying to search around if he ran away ages ago. He's probably long gone by now."

"R—Right!" Connor stammers, clumsily whipping out his phone as he contacts the rest of the group. As soon as Wilbur finishes, the first thing he does is run down the hallway and downstairs to the Research Base. A small part of him, dug deep into the uncharted recesses of his heart, hopes to find something — _anything —_ Schlatt left behind. Maybe a note, or sign. _Anything._

He races down the stairs and over to the desk, swatting away stacks of papers and files which are scattered all over. Nothing.

Frantically, he looks under the Stuff-ble (you know, that large circular table in the middle of the base). Underneath remains bare. He checks the boxes and storage cupboards, tucked at the back of the room. All of it lays barren.

_C'mon, Schlatt. C'mon... this can't be the end. You can't have just. . ._

Memories of last night's incident flashes in his mind, stirring in the roots of his heart.

_'Did all of that mean_ **_nothing_ ** _to you?!'  
  
_

_'Have you ever thought that maybe_ **_you've been the crazy one this whole time?!'  
  
_ **

His eyes screw shut.  
  


_. . . Maybe I am crazy, Schlatt.  
  
_

_Maybe I_ **_have_ ** _lost my mind._

_  
Maybe what I'm doing is just nonsense.  
  
_

_. . . But maybe, being crazy is what it takes to solve this god damned puzzle. And maybe . . . losing my mind will end up helping me find you._

And then, he opens his eyes, taking a step back to scan the room whole. Surely, the nagging itch in the twist of his gut, telling him that Schlatt had left something behind — surely that gut feeling won't let him down.

His eyes then pinpoint onto an item beside the projector — a pile of bandages, presumably the same ones used to wrap his neck. Wilbur stumbles over to it, grabbing the tangled mess of bandages. With one hand, he carefully unwraps the knots, but after getting too hasty he ends up ripping it apart. Once he does, inside the wrapped bandages is a small sheet of paper.

A small spark of hope lights up his soul, and his eyes shimmer in desire when he realises that it's...

_A letter. From Schlatt._

He flips the piece of paper over, and sees a message written in extremely messy handwriting — he can barely read what it says.

As he finishes reading, the note slips from between his fingers, and he feels something burn inside his chest.

"Schlat. . . no . . ." he murmurs, feeling his own heart rip in two.  
  


**_'I'm sorry for all the shit I said. I'm sorry for everything.'  
  
_ **

He can't help but not deny the stirrings in his gut; is he really sorry? Those things he said...  
  


_'You pretend people mean something to you, when really you just use them like tools . . . '  
  
_

_'You hurt me, and you acted like nothing happened. . .'  
  
_

**_'I hate you, Wilbur. I've always hated you.'_ **

_He meant every bit of what he said. The virus alters with the brain, but it doesn't change how you feel about someone. Those things he said... it came from his heart. Even if that heart had been taken over by an infection._

He collapses to his knees, feeling tears rim the edges of his eyes as he comes across over the daunting realisation.  
  


_I broke him._

  
He clasps a hand over his mouth, holding back a sob. _I hurt him._

The aching in his heart dwells deeper and stronger, until he can't hold back. Digging his head into both hands, he cries, letting the floodgates of tears open and stream down his face.

"It wasn't supposed to end like this. . ." he mumbles, crying into his hands. _"I should have been the one who left, not him."_

_  
. . . It was because of me. This happened because of me. This—_

"Wilbur? Wilbur, where are you!?"

The distant yells of Tommy silence him from his train of thought. Clasping his hand tighter around his mouth, Wilbur removes the other, and glances up. Nobody's in the room.  
The rest of the group must have returned, waiting upstairs. Right. He almost forgot he wasn't the only one living here.

He bites his lip, wiping his eyes, praying that the other won't notice he'd been crying just now. If they ask, he'll just blame his glassy eyes over another restless night. At least that wasn't a lie.  
Quickly, Wilbur stumbles up from the ground, burying the note in his jacket pocket as he rushes upstairs.

"Sorry, I was just looking for something," Wilbur says once he meets up with everybody in the living room. Connor, who had listened to Wilbur's order, had done the job of gathering everybody inside. Not that there were many people, anyway. It was just Ty and Tommy who were outside.

"W—What do we do, Wilbur?!" Ty exclaims, hyperactive with panic, as he grabs Wilbur's shoulders. "We've searched everywhere and he's gone! He's really gone! Did he run away forever?"

Wilbur looks away, avoiding eye contact. His refusal to speak makes Connor aware of his stress.

"Everyone, calm down." For once, Connor takes action in being the leader. "Clearly, Wilbur's overwhelmed by everything going on. Leading the group in a time like this is taking a toll on him, and loading him with questions will only make things worse."

"Connor," Tommy asks him with big, worried eyes. "Do you think Schlatt's infected? You think he became like one of those. . ."

He doesn't finish his sentence. Connor pauses, pursing his lips for a few beats of anxious seconds before speaking in a softer tone.

"There's no way I can tell for certain."

Just then, an abrupt knock on the door silences them all. Immediately, Wilbur's hopes perk up; and so does everyone else.

"Oh thank _God,"_ he sighs, immensely relieved. "That must be Schlatt."

_It has to be Schlatt. He must have changed his mind after writing that note. Yeah, that's it. He changed his mind! He's not actually infected, it was all just psychological. He's OK. He's completely OK!_

Ty is the first to dash to the front door. "Schlatt, don't scare us like—!!"

His voice trails off as he opens the door; for who stood in front was not Schlatt.

"... that."

Everybody else scurries around the entrance, and with gaping mouths they all exclaim:

****_"Technoblade?!"  
  
_

In front of the door, is a tall man with a fit build wearing a dark red cloak, brown backpack, lace-up boots and a tight white T-shirt; his thick, blossom pink hair is tied in a bun, and he stares at the boys with solemnly grave crimson eyes.

"I need to speak to you all," he says in an underlying, intimidatingly low voice, "because we're in a _lot_ more danger than I thought."


End file.
